2011 Wolford Family Home - Part One

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In the Fall of 2010, Greene Habitat accepted a proposal to take on the completion of a LEED certified home built by CATEC (Charlottesville Area Technical Education Center). As the first student-built LEED house in the country as well as the first LEED house in Greene County, it was an opportunity we couldn't pass up. It required us, however, to significantly push up our plans for our fourth house build. Our partner, Rebekah Wolford was also happy about the prospect and we moved ahead with the project in the dead of winter. By January 2011, the lot had been cleared, the infrastructure put in place and the foundation built in anticipation of the house to be trucked in.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is an internationally recognized green building certification with strategies intended to improve performance in energy savings, water efficiency, and indoor environmental quality while reducing carbon dioxide emissions and practicing good stewardship of resources. LEED was developed by the U.S. Green Building Council and a building so certified must meet exceedingly high standards.

The model that was developed, the "Hinge House", was pre-fabricated using energy efficient materials and techniques and is comprised of three separate sections that were moved by crane and assembled at the build site. The finished home is an attractive hardi-plank sided structure with three bedrooms, two baths and 1,250 total square feet. Among other features, it has an insulated ceiling capped with a metal roof, energy efficient windows and doors, a continuous flow hot water heater, and rainwater drainage and catchment systems.

(Photos by Jerry Besanson and Don Willock)

Throughout December 2010 and January 2011, Rebekah's lot is cleared, the well is dug, and the septic system and drain field are installed. Lastly, the foundation was constructed which completed the site prep.

Here's the house as it looked sitting on cinderblocks behind CATAC. The first four photos were from October and the last two were taken the morning of the big move.

The cranes arive and the crew begins to set up the work site. The first order of business was to move the trailers into place so that the chunks of the house could be easily lifted onto them.

The first piece of the house, the master bedroom, is lifted off of the blocks where it has been sitting for nearly three years. The crane operator expertly sets it into place on the transport trailer.

Chunk number two, which contains the two smaller bedrooms, is hoisted onto the trailer right behind the previous piece. Now the specially designed roof is collapsed on the main house piece to make the structure small enough to be transported on public roads.

The last and largest piece is set onto its trailer. This part features the living room, dining room, kitchen and utility room. With everything in place, the house embarks on its journey to Greene County

Here we are in the Greene Acres subdivision, just North of Stanardsville, where the cranes, work crews and pieces of the house arrive. It took nearly an hour to get the main house piece past that bend in the road.

In the reverse order of how it went onto the trailers, the house sections are lifted into place and set on its foundation.

The two smaller chunks are set into place and the structure is assembled into a complete house for the very first time. The last picture was taken a few weeks later after the trenches around the foundation had been filled in. Now it looks like a house.