Drury breaks ground on solar-powered, tornado-resistant house

Now is the time to build.

After months of planning and research, a Drury University team competing in the Solar Decathlon 2015 is ready to start construction on the ShelteR3 home.

Drury hosted a groundbreaking Tuesday to mark this phase of the national competition hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy. A joint event was held at Crowder College, which is Drury's partner.

The house will be constructed on the Crowder's campus in Neosho. The team comprises more than 50 students from both campuses — and more than a dozen majors — and they have worked together to design, engineer, market and construct a solar-powered and storm-resistant home.

According to a news release, the Crowder-Drury team — inspired by the deadly Joplin tornado in 2011 — has self-imposed the additional challenge of making its home disaster resilient. Students looked at the immediate and long-term effects of the EF-5 tornado that hit Joplin and affected the lives of students on both campuses.

After the structure is built, the team will transport the home to a competition site in Irvine, California, for the October competition. The team will compete against more than a dozen other schools including Yale University, Clemson University, California Polytechnic State University and Missouri University of Science and Technology.

The plan for the Crowder-Drury house is built on the three R's: respond, recover and resist.

More than a quarter million people are expected to tour the home at the competition site.