A tour of a solar/green home will take place at 3 p.m., Friday, Oct 3, on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Students from Georgia Tech originally designed and built the home for last year’s Solar Decathlon competition in Washington, D.C. The 800-sq.-ft. home, dubbed Icarus, took sixth place in the contest and has since been rebuilt outside Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture.

The home’s most noticeable feature is the material that makes up the roof and two of its walls. Constructed from a translucent polycarbonate material, the substance allows the house to be filled with light without becoming an energy drainer.

In additional to PV panels for electricity, the home also features evacuated tube panels to provide domestic hot water. In additional, an energy recovery ventilator conditions incoming air using the temperature and humidity of the outgoing exhaust air from the home.

On the plumbing side, the home’s water management system collects rainwater from the roof as well as water from the sinks and air-conditioning to a storage tank in the garden for grey water use.

For more information on the home, go to http://solar.gatech.edu. To see a video of the solar home, click on www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA_s7yFmMHE.