03.01.06
Once In A Lifetime
by ELLEN WALKER
Originally published in Spring 2006 edition of West VIrginia Builder

Mike McKechnie of Mountain View Builders in Berkeley Springs has always been energy conscious and has tried to find ways to incorporate many of today’s new technologies into the custom homes that he and his brother Pete McKechnie build.

This fall McKechnie decided to attempt to take his conservation goals to the next level.  The 2005 Solar Decathlon was scheduled for early October, and he and his brother Pete and good friend Larry Robinson of Twin Mountain Construction in Hedgesville, decided to investigate the possibility of buying a Decathlon house.

For the amount of money they had to invest, the odds were very slim, but McKechnie decided that it was at least worth a try.  He contacted several schools that were in the competition and made inquiries.  He finally approached the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and things began to happen.

McKechnie explained that his dream was to make a Decathlon house a solar research facility in West Virginia.  It would be accessible to builders, contractors, and the general public to learn about saving natural resources, discovering sources of renewable energy, and to incorporate new technologies into mainstream building practices.

“I envision a type of solar bed and breakfast where there would be workshops and ongoing projects with Shepherd University Environmental Science Department and the University of Maryland,” said McKechnie.

The dream caught the attention of the UMass team.  Their original plan for the house was to leave it in Washington, DC to be used as a Habitat for Humanity house, but the site was not available and the house had to be moved completely off of the Mall in Washington within a very limited timeframe.  The school agreed to sell the house to the three men if they would agree to have the site cleared and the building moved to West Virginia within the allotted time.

The plans for the house are to reassemble the house next to the existing brick structure and to renovate the exterior to look like a traditional home.  Once it is operational, McKechnie will live in the house for one year monitoring the systems, keeping exact records and making sure everything is working properly.  It will be a totally self-sustaining Net Zero house.  While living on site, he will continue to renovate the older existing structure and begin converting it to a hybrid house, using a thermal mass created in an existing cistern.

McKechnie plans for the Decathlon house to be attached to the main house structure but to be detached from any grid power.  From the road it will look like a conventional home, but it will use no outside power.  That portion of the property will become a research facility for educational purposes.

The house uses a combination of forced-air heated exchange, passing intake air by phase-change material, and radiant-floor piping heated by one of two rooftop evacuated tube solar thermal collector provides domestic hot water.  Lighting is a combination of compact fluorescents and passive lighting, including light tubes to bring light from the roof.

Each entry in the Decathlon had an electric car which was fueled by excess energy produced by that project.  McKechnie received the vehicle when the house was purchased.  It is licensed as a low speed vehicle.  Behind the car is a solar panel which supplies energy for his company’s sign on their office building.

“My dream is to make renewable energy available for the average person and to make it user friendly,” said McKechnie.  “I want to make the house look extremely normal, but to work better than a conventional home.”