Solar Decathlon house built in Norfolk

NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) - A house was delivered in four pieces Wednesday in Norfolk, and crews fit them together to make a one-of-a-kind Solar Decathlon house.

The house is on 48th Street behind Old Dominion University, across from the student recreation center. It's called Unit 6 Unplugged, a joint effort of ODU and Hampton University and their entry into the Solar Decathlon, a competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.

"So this area here is the living room and as you can see, we've put extensive windows on the south wall there. That's one of the ways we're getting passive solar heating in the winter time," said Team Tidewater Virginia Project Manager John Whitelaw.

Part of the challenge is to design, build, and operate the most affordable, attractive and energy-efficient solar house.

Members of the Solar Decathlon team will spend the rest of the spring and summer helping the house take shape.

"We have a bunch of sit construction, we build the decking out over here, we put in a utility core where our solar hot water heater and inverter systems for the PV's go. The windows will be installed in late June," said Whitelaw.

There's a lot more work to be done, but for the students who saw the house drawn on paper, today was somewhat of a gift.

"To see this here and be set today, we've described it as Christmas because we worked on a project for over a year, some of them two years, and to see it here we can actually physically walk around in a house that we designed is pretty neat," said HU student Dana Cook.

Another student said it was good on the job experience.

"To get to do that, to have a house on our resume before we graduate from college is pretty cool," said HU student Noel Harrison.

The team will disassemble the house in the fall and move it to Washington, D.C. for the Solar Decathlon.