Worthington students' ultragreen home up for prestigious award

SNP photo by Dan Trittschuh
Worthington Kilbourne High School teacher Roger Beck is pictured in front of a home at 258 N. 21st St. in East Columbus. Beck and students in the Home BASE program at Kilbourne helped to build the home with a number of green and energy-efficient features.
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* A house built by the now-defunct Home BASE group at Kilbourne High School will compete with loftier projects for the Recchie Award.
By PAMELA WILLIS
Published: Tuesday, November 4, 2008 9:57 PM EST
"The house that kids built" is not only energy-efficient, green and sustainable, but up for a major award from the Columbus Landmark Foundation.

Teacher Roger Beck and former Worthington Kilbourne High School students who participated in Home BASE, the district's former learning community, built the house at 258 N. 21st St. in Columbus for about $200,000, including the cost of the lot.

The BASE in Home BASE stands for "Building Academic Skills and Experiences," but the program was suspended in April, when school officials told Beck and parents that the program and its latest project "had unresolved legal issues and low enrollment."

Home BASE students and staff built 10 houses in 10 years, most in partnership with Habitat for Humanity, Beck said.

The 10th house, the one on 21st Street, included a partnership with the Columbus Green Building Forum and the Columbus Housing Partnership.

The Columbus Landmark Foundation nominated the house for the Recchie Award, which is given to "the most significant structure built within the last year in the city of Columbus."

Only five structures are nominated each year, and most are multimillion-dollar buildings, Beck said.

"It is striking that a high school class could be honored like this with such a nomination. The other nominees are generally projects built with multimillion-dollar budgets. I don't know of a single family residence that has ever been nominated.

"I think our house was nominated because it has the potential to do so much for the community in terms of energy-efficiency, sustainability and green building," he said.

The Recchie Award will be announced at the foundation's design awards program Thursday, Nov. 6.

The house won the Foundation's President's Award in 2006, before it was even finished, as the project took shape as LEED-certified, which stands for "Leadership in Environment and Energy Design."

Beck said then the house received that first major award because "we are building one of the most environmentally sustainable and energy-efficient green homes in the state of Ohio, if not the nation."

The Recchie is even more prestigious.

"To be nominated for this award is very exciting, and I think it shows the value of what can happen if a school project is supported in such a way it allows students to integrate their education authentically within the curriculum," Beck said.

The house recently was featured on the cover of the Green Energy Ohio magazine, Beck said.

What makes the house so "green" are the latest green building designs and materials, he said.

"We included both solar thermal cells that produce hot liquid that will heat water, and solar photovoltaic panels that produce electricity," Beck said. "We also built a very tight building enclosure. It is so well-insulated that we heated the house last winter with the equivalent of a hand-held hair dryer. That shocked even me, and I was intimate with the project."

Beck said the house includes a ventilation system to introduce fresh air and advanced framing techniques for durability.

"The typically framed house has a design life of 60 years," he said. "We built for a design life of 300 years."

The house does not have a "new house" or "new car" smell, Beck said.

"We used nonvolatile organic compounds (VOC)," he said. "Non-VOC materials won't give off any compounds that are cancer-causing, as cabinets and other structures in new houses can. A new house smell is a dangerous smell, because all the volatile compounds are coming out in the air. Our cabinets are also made from wood grown in sustainable forests."

The house also has a rain garden and rainwater system that captures storm-water runoff to irrigate native Ohio plants used in the landscaping design.

"The roof is metal and should last 80 years, built by Dimensional Metals Inc.," Beck said. "It is a roof that can last three times longer than the normal roof and when it does come off, can be recycled."

Beck said the siding material on the house has a life expectancy of 80 years and the windows are triple-pane, with trim materials that won't rot.

Beck said he'll be at the awards ceremony with as many former students as he can round up.

"Win, lose, tie or draw, I hope the students realize the significance of what they've done," he said. "We are the only program of this type in the nation. These high school students made a commitment to build one of the most green and sustained houses in the state of Ohio and are helping to change how housing is built in Central Ohio."




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