Animated Owl

About the Competition

The "Do it in the Dark" wood frame energy competition is a contest amongst all the senior woodframes at Wesleyan to see who can conserve the most energy. Each month two houses will receive prizes for the lowest monthly energy consumption and the lowest year-to-date consumption.

How Do I Enter?
All senior woodframes are automatically entered into the competition.

What Are the Prizes?
Each month, the two winning houses will win a NIGHT OUT at Eli Cannons or any restaurant, courtesy of Project SAVE and EON.

How Can I Conserve Energy?
There are tons of easy ways to reduce the energy consumption of your house including:
  • Turning off lights when you leave the room.
  • Cover pots when cooking.
  • Shut down computers when you are not going to be using them for more than an hour.
  • Only use CFL lightbulbs (free from Usdan computer store)
  • Turn down thermometer instead of opening windows
There are many other tips to help conserve energy and they can be found in the "Tips" section of the website.

Why Target wood Frames?
Wood Frome houses use 40% of the energy used to power ALL campus buildings and produce 43% of Wesleyan's CO2 emissions.

Top Houses

Monthly Winners
25 Fountain4.04 *
14 Warren4.3 *
72 Home6.02 *
162 Church6.38 *
43 Fountain6.85 *
Lowest Year to Date
14 Warren5.68 *
25 Fountain5.94 *
162 Church6.04 *
390 High7.37 *
72 Home7.42 *

Big Losers

Monthly Losers
215-217 Pine38.1 *
51 Fountain29.83 *
159 Vine25.67 *
235 Pine25.25 *
10 Knowles24.54 *
Highest Year to Date
215-217 Pine30.37 *
235 Pine27.17 *
72 High25.89 *
56 Fountain25.78 *
29 Miles25.53 *

* The ranks are calculated by taking the energy consumed per month (in BTU's), divided by the area of the house (in SqFt), divided by the number of Heating degree days (HDD).
  • BTU stands for British Thermal Units. One BTU is defined to be the amount of energy required to raise 1 pound of water, 1o Farenheit.
  • A Heating degree day is an indice whose purpose is to reflect the demand for energy over a period of time. For example, a warmer month will have a lower HDD index than a colder month because the demand for heat energy is higher in the colder month.
The reason the energy is divided by the square footage of the house is so that compaison between larger houses (which require more energy to heat) and smaller houses (which require less energy to heat) is fair. The resulting quantity is then divided by the HDD index in order to make comparisons between consumption during different years consistent.

Web Development and Design by:
Aaron Larner
(alarner@wesleyan.edu)


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