Samantha Saville
The Paw Print
The new class offered this semester on building “green” homes is taught by Chuck Reel who owns the company Natural Power. This class is offered on Saturdays in the business building. Students can sign up for this class for credit through the school or can take the classes individually and just pay for the ones attended. Along with the four lectures, two hands-on activities and two home tours will be included.
This course is designed to help people who are building their own home to build one that will cost about the same as hiring a professional builder and will pay off in the end. Chuck Reel gave the figures: “This fact can save tens of thousands of dollars over the life of the home which is a very big pay off indeed.” These homes seem expensive to build with all the new technology, but Mr. Reel says “If the owner does all his own labor and scrounges a little then it might be built for as little as $10 per sq. ft. If they pay aprofessional builder to design and build it turnkey, then it could cost in the $100 per sq. ft. but so do most homes of equal quality. These are hand-built homes not mass-produced like most every builder builds.” Chuck Reels class can teach anyone how to do this.
This new technology that Chuck Reel teaches helps you build homes which will be “greener”. This means that you can build your house using self-made adobe bricks, which Mr. Reel teaches you how to do in one of his hands-on activities. He will teach you everything from new kinds of insulation to back-up heating. These classes are every other Saturday starting last Saturday, January 23rd. There will be a break for March Break but the classes will last until May 8th.
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