effiecient buildings of the future!

Mannnn camp was worth it!
The waking up was brutal, weather was murderous, but we learned sooooooooo many cool stuff.
(long post, sit tight)

but first my rants :]
waking up: lost sleep is supplemented by napping on subway trips there and back. I've developed a skill to lightly sleep and yet still be mindful of the stations being announced. Though I would still never commute my way to university.

weather: majority of the week was unbearably hot. I'm not kidding, I have to wear long pants and the buildings (GB and SF) are not air conditioned. To add to that, my course has a lot of tours that involves walking outside "orz Then again, I'm just bad with the heat. On the last day (today), it decides to rain like crazy. I appreciate the cooling and all, just not the getting soaked from knee down with an umbrella.


so now the part that makes the previous paragraph all worth it.
Monday: intro, general energy stuff, relation to buildings. T'was an okay day, group work was fun though. My group absolutely sucked at conversions ;D

Tuesday: Building envelope, and heat/moisture/air transfers. Again, lots of conversion. People weren't kidding when they say that engineers eat math for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Got to play with an infrared therometer *u*
Visited HART HOUSE, it is the most amaaaaazing student center ever. I would go to UT solely for this. I don't have pics of the place, but yeah, it's amazing. It contains 2 gyms, a swimming pool, library, art gallery, great hall (modeled after the one in King's College aka where the Harry Potter great hall scenes were shot), and a restaurant that was voted the best place to have lunch in Toronto (Gil, we're soooo going there ;P). Just awesome!

Wednesday: Awesome, awesome day. First the instructors (they were so nice!) showed us some cool videos of The World's Greenest Homes:

(rui was awesome enough to show me this earlier)
Also New York's Paltz Dome and Hamburg's Eco House
In the afternoon, we designed our own low energy houses, incorporating passive/active strategies and guidelines for occupancy behaviour. (click on the images for full view and descriptions. Sorry for crappy quality, cell cam)

It's pretty amazing as we only had around 2 hours to plan and build the entire thing. My lovely group members cut out the foam using xacto knifes (props). Here's an extensive features list: sky lights (coverable by PV cells in summer), light tube, optimized windows (glazing and orientation), adjustable roof with solar panels, precipitation collection system (with the turbine xD), and well insulated envelope. It would be awesome if this was an actual house, I'd love to live in it.

Thursday: missed T_T woke up reeeeeeally light headed, so opt to stay home and rest.

Friday: Toured a church near Sheppard&Bayview, it's amazing as well. It has coloured glass as skylights, which is pretty and saves electricity! A whole bunch of other eco features as well (like a hydroponic living wall!). The most innovative feature was how they hide the distribution system for the HVAC, amaaaaaazing.
Played jeopardy in the afternoon, despite the questions being about stuff learned on thursday, my group still managed to win! :] I was the only one who knew the answer to final jeopardy harhar *ego*

in short, DEEP is an amaaaazing program. Definitely worthwhile!