Flatbed trucks are rolling up to the OC Fair & Event Center this week carrying precious cargo.
College students from as close as Riverside and Northridge and as far as Virginia and China spent months designing and building homes that model affordable ways to live sustainably, only to disassemble those structures and load segments of them onto the trucks. Now they’ll spend the next several days reconstructing their innovative homes along a “street” at the fairgrounds, as they compete in the first-ever Orange County Sustainability Decathlon.
The green village that students are building will be open to the public for free over eight days, starting Oct. 5. Along with touring the prototype homes, visitors are invited to attend a green job fair, listen to guest speakers, watch documentaries and check out sustainable products for sale. Thousands of students of all ages from around the region will be bused in for Education Day on Oct. 6. There also will be a symphony performance of nature-themed music, crafts for kids, a sustainable beer and wine garden and food for sale, with new events still being added to the schedule.
Despite the serious need to move toward more sustainable lifestyles amid worsening climate change, Fred Smoller, a Chapman University professor who co-founded the decathlon, said he knows they won’t win the public over with a “doom and gloom” event.
“We want this family atmosphere, this fun atmosphere,” he said. “You can live a sustainable lifestyle and still have the things that you and I value, like air conditioning and TV. And that’s the message we want to get across.”
Along with inspiring the public and giving students a chance for hands-on learning, Smoller and partner Mike Moodian said they also see this event as part of a much larger goal — to turn Orange County and the rest of Southern California into the world capitol of sustainability.
Cue the eye rolls, Smoller said with a chuckle. He knows they’re happening as you read this because he’s seen such dismissive expressions dozens of times over the past several years, as he’s pitched his dream to business leaders, elected officials and regular folk alike.
But sustainability is now “top of mind” for leaders in the local business community, said Reuben Franco, chief executive of the Orange County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
After all, this area has had a front-row seat in recent years to some of the most serious effects of climate change, from wildfires to drought to a rising Pacific Ocean. Southern California is also already home to more than 300 companies working on solutions to clean up air travel, use waves to produce clean energy, make the next generation of electric vehicles, and more. The region already has access to ports, airports, rail and highways that can easily get those solutions to the rest of the world. There’s a state legislature that’s made climate issues a top priority, too, with bipartisan public support for environmental causes even in traditionally conservative communities like Orange County.
Those conditions make Orange County a “strategic spot for climate progress,” according to Hoiyin Ip, a local leader with the Sierra Club. She said action here can build bridges in a way that progress in, say, the Bay Area just can’t.
And it’s why Smoller and Moodian see sustainability as the next evolution in this area’s economy.
“We’re not inventing something,” Smoller said. “We’re simply trying to change the branding.”
That effort, they say, starts with the Orange County Sustainability Decathlon.
The starting line
State Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine, bought into the vision.
“There is no better place to harness innovation than right here in Orange County,” Min said. “The Sustainability Decathlon is our chance to show the world that Orange County can and should be a green hub for research, technology and high-tech jobs.”
Smoller and Moodian said they’d approached just about every local elected official requesting support for their planned decathlon with no success. But after Min got elected in 2020, the first state budget request he made was for a $5 million grant to put on the event and give student teams $100,000 in seed money to build sustainable homes.
“This event will not only be a huge tourism draw for the region, but I am hopeful that it will also result in important innovations in green housing that we can use to help speed up the transition to a zero emissions economy,” Min said.
Smoller’s wife actually gets credit for the spark that led to this event.
Back in 2009, he was at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. working on an academic paper when he got a call from his wife. Lidija Smoller told her husband to head out to the National Mall, after seeing on the news that the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon was underway there.
Smoller had never heard of the biannual event, where teams of university students from around the world came to show off solar-powered homes they’d built. But before Smoller was a political science professor, he said he was a “Home Depot guy” who put himself through graduate school doing construction projects. And when he saw how engaged the decathlon students were and what they’d accomplished, he became determined to bring the event to the West Coast.
Four years later, in 2013, Irvine beat out a couple dozen other major U.S. cities to host the first Solar Decathlon held outside D.C. More than 64,000 visitors passed through, touring 19 student-built solar homes. In 2015, Smoller helped bring the event back to Irvine’s Great Park. That year a team made up of students from UC Irvine, Chapman University, Irvine Valley College and Saddleback College built a home called Casa Del Sol that placed ninth overall.
With a new city council seated, Smoller said Irvine didn’t apply to host the next Solar Decathlon. So he decided to see about getting state funds to host a decathlon in Orange County every two years that moved beyond solar, to focus on all sorts of home-oriented sustainable innovations. He teamed up with Moodian, who’d worked with him for years on Chapman’s Orange County Annual Survey. The pair got financial support from Min’s bill, found a willing venue in the fairgrounds and lined up a list of sponsors to make the first Orange County Sustainability Decathlon a reality.
Then came time to find student teams to build the green village that’s at the heart of the event.
Teams line up
Fourteen teams are set to compete in this year’s decathlon.
Southern California is well represented, with teams from UC Irvine, Cal State Fullerton, Cal State Long Beach and Cal Poly Pomona.
Some teams are partnerships between multiple colleges, including one made up of students from UC San Diego and China’s Zhejiang Normal University.
One isn’t a college at all. The Rancho Cielo Construction Academy is a trade school in Salinas that serves mostly low-income students 16 to 24 years old. Many didn’t earn high school diplomas as they struggled with issues such as homelessness and foster care. Some were sent to Rancho Cielo as an alternative to jail. Today, they’re wrapping up construction on a one-bedroom home that will eventually wind up on the Salinas campus to house a staff member.
Cooper Proulx, 20, of Temecula first heard about the O.C. Solar Decathlon from one of his mechanical engineering professors during his freshman year at UC Riverside, in March 2022. And he’s been working on the project ever since, with help from a rotating team of students from diverse programs and some generous friends who’ve put in late nights and hot days to build their first home.
While Proulx is excited about their plant wall, solar panels and minimalistic Scandinavian design, he said the most unique thing about the Riverside team’s 1,154-square-foot home is that it’s a hexagon.
Proulx said they opted to build a six-sided structure first because it allows for the most interior space with the least amount of wall space. That cuts down on needed materials, which is good for the planet. It also makes the project cost effective, which was important to his team since they didn’t receive any additional funding aside from the $100,000 state grant and donated solar panels. And if a developer built a subdivision of hexagon-shaped homes, Proulx said his team calculated that they could nest them together and fit up to 40% more homes on the same stretch of land as traditional structures.
“What we’ve really learned is that it’s hard for people to come by environmental change when they’re struggling financially,” Proulx said. “So building a financially sustainable home was our No. 1 priority.”
The Riverside team is still putting final touches on their home. Proulx said they’ll split the floor into 11 sections and the walls into 17 sections and use cranes to load them onto trucks bound for Costa Mesa. He’s most nervous about the final step of setting the roof on top of the home at the fairgrounds.
“You never know for sure. That’s the scariest part,” he said. “But we’re cautiously optimistic.”
Proulx’s team will intentionally leave one wall of the home open, so they can show visitors what the wiring and plumbing and insulation looks like. And once the competition is over, he said they plan to donate the two-bedroom, two-bath home — which will end up costing about $65,000 to build, not including students’ free labor — to Habitat for Humanity’s homeless shelter program.
“Hopefully a family of four in need will be able to utilize the home,” he said.
Cal State Northridge’s team plans to try to sell their sustainable home once the competition is over, according to team member Mark Ghssoub, 23, of Glendale, who’s a senior at the university. Any money they make could help fund future student projects.
Ghssoub’s team of 32 mechanical engineering students had more time and money to work with, since seniors could earn college credits for their time working on the home and the university also contributed funds to the project. But that didn’t mean it’s all been smooth sailing.
The Northridge team hadn’t quite gotten the roof on their home when tropical storm Hillary hit last month. Ghssoub said they tried to cover it in thick plastic, but water still soaked into the newly installed drywall and insulation. So they had to redo much of that work, knocking them off schedule for the competition. But Ghssoub said they’ll bring the best home they can to the fairgrounds on Thursday, Sept. 28, which will give them a few days to finish things up before the decathlon opens to the public.
Their modular home is made up of three 400-square-foot units that can be reconfigured in different ways. It includes solar panels to power the home, sustainable paint, a lattice out front to shade the home, plus double-paned windows and thick insulation to keep it cool.
Before the decathlon has even started, the event has already spurred some positive climate moves.
Both Ghssoub and Proulx said sustainability really wasn’t on their radar until they started this project, and neither of them had any experience with construction. “I didn’t even know how to hammer a nail in straight,” Ghssoub said with a laugh.
Now, Proulx said he plans to one day build his own green home. He also bought an electric vehicle, which wasn’t something he’d considered before starting the competition. And Ghssoub said he’s planning to get a hybrid or an EV after learning about climate and energy issues through this process.
A team at UC Riverside also started working on developing a more sustainable alternative to drywall thanks to this competition, Proulx said. While the timing didn’t work to incorporate that technology into their home, Proulx said those efforts are continuing and they hope to have it ready for the next decathlon.
That’ll be 2025, back at the OC Fair & Event Center, if Smoller and Moodian have their way.
To keep the public engaged, the private sector incentivized and students enthusiastic about continuing to move the needle forward, Smoller said events like these need to happen all over, regularly, “for generations.”
If you go
When: Opening ceremonies are 1-3 p.m. Oct. 5, with speeches and presentations from each student team. The decathlon is open 3-9 p.m. weekdays Oct. 5, 6, 12 and 13, then 10 a.m.-9 p.m. weekends Oct. 7, 8, 14 and 15. Guided home tours end at 4 p.m. on weekends.
Where: OC Fair & Event Center at 88 Fair Dr., Costa Mesa
Get there: Fairgrounds parking is $12 per car, but attendees are encouraged to get into the spirit of the event by using public transportation
Cost: Free
What to do: Tour the homes and ask student builders questions; listen to a Pacific Symphony performance 6-7 p.m. Oct. 5; browse booths with sustainable products for sale; explore the Wyland Foundation Clean Water Mobile Learning Center; let kids build model homes made out of recycled material at the Child Creativity Lab booth; see e-bikes and electric cars from Mercedes, Audi and more; attend a school and career fair 3-6 p.m. Oct. 13; check out the Monarch butterfly exhibit; test an atmospheric water generator; screen documentary films; attend guest speaker panels; sample sustainable wine and beer; eat food from local vendors, including vegan options
Learn more: Visit OCSD23.com to get more information and register for the free app, which has details about events each day.
