This Habitat for Humanity (HFH) GreenBuild community project moves a 100-year old home to a “200-year” home

At face value, 802 West McCarty is nothing special, just one of 800 vacant or foreclosed homes in a distressed Jefferson City, MO urban neighborhood. But you don’t end up with the team listed to the right without creating something special indeed: the deepest green Habitat for Humanity (HFH) remodeling project in the Midwest. “We took it from the past 100 years and will be able to give it another 100 years of life,” says Ken Thoenen of Ken Thoenen Homes, the project chairman.

Humble home, humble owners

802 McCarty was built in 1913 just a couple of blocks from downtown Jefferson City . “A home located for walking,” says Matt Belcher, the sustainable building consultant on the project team. And that is just what the home’s first owners did:

– A. P. Nixdorf, prison guard (1913)

– Eugene Pitroff, printer (1915)

– Lon Stone, brickman (1925)

– Frank Burns, bookkeeper at State Treasury Office (1929)

– Harold Angerer 1930’s – 1956

– Kenny Angerer 1956 – ?

The new owners, Courtney and Kevin Pigford, both work at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, which is about ¼ mile away.

Getting everyone involved, yet staying integrated

While having a lot of project support and participation is terrific, you won’t end up with a high-performance retrofit without keeping everyone on the same page. Students from Linn State Technical College completed the redesign of 802 McCarty, and demolition and construction were accomplished by carpenters-in-training from the local school district and more than 50 HFH volunteers.

“We used the NAHBGreen online checklist as our guiding document,” said Belcher. “We identified criteria we would undertake and then broke down applicable sections with specific leading team members.”

Belcher adds that from the very beginning the project team had these redesign goals to drive the process as well:

– Keep same footprint, but increase livable square footage by a third by going up (lower main floor ceiling to 8 feet, creating an additional bedroom, half-bath, and storage in the attic).

– Tighten up the building envelope (Matt: “We got an initial reading of about 8,500 cfm50. We were unable to get the house to depressurize to -50Pa, so our equipment estimated the cfm50 reading at 8,500. It isn’t an exact science by any means, but 8,500 does describe a really leaky house at such a small size.”)

– Create needed space and manage moisture by going down (dig out a 12’ by 12’ by 5’ section of the crawlspace into a basement for a central stairwell).

– Bring in the sun (remove the existing laundry room; relocate the kitchen and a bedroom to the rear of the home).

– Make the home durable with good indoor air quality (insulate the roofline and walls with spray foam, bring all ducts and HVAC equipment inside by locating these elements in the attic).

– Improve the site (manage storm water on site, improve grading, and establish mature native vegetation).

While they were at it…

The house at 802 W McCarty ended up being certified for both the NGBS rating program as well as the DOE Building America Builder’s Challenge. Here is Matt Belcher again: “The NAHBGreen checklist also has the benchmarks and checklist for the Building America/Builder’s Challenge program. As we were completing the checklist, we realized we were also hitting those benchmarks. We worked with Amber Wood, Energy Manager at NAHB Research Center for the dual certification within the scoring tool. And then throw in on top of that Energy Star certification — not too shabby.”

There is nothing more local than next door

For years, the lack of proper grading on the site directed water right to the house. At an early planning meeting, Matt heard that Jefferson City would be taking down the condemned house next door. He knew that all the homes in this area had cut limestone blocks for foundations. Turns out that no one had “claimed” these blocks, and the demolition contractor was more than happy to simply push them on to the 802 W McCarty property rather than haul them away. A retaining wall made of the neighbors’ foundation blocks now manages water, directing it away from the home.

True “sweat equity”

Not only did this project have half a hundred dedicated volunteers, it had a core group of students from the nearby Nichols Career Center who did most of the carpentry, drywall, siding, and trim. But the real proof of their mettle was digging and carrying out, bucket by five-gallon bucket, all of the soil to turn a major portion of the foundation from crawlspace to full basement. No more lazy comments about today’s youth, at least not in Jefferson City!