The progress continues on the Thrivent Builds house, despite the intense heat today. As you can see in the picture, it's got some of the siding on, and contractors were working on the electrical for it and several of the neighboring houses. There were groups from PG&E and Wells Fargo out volunteering today.
But the real story today is that I didn't work with Juan, the site carpenter, like I have for the past several Fridays. That's because Juan, who is a Habitat homeowner, was with his family taking his son to college to get settled in the dorms. Lots of people are doing that this time of year, but the cool part is that Juan's son is the first in the family to go to college. Some cool news for this hot day!
Planning to watch the Oakland Raiders take on the Philadelphia Eagles on October 18th? Buy your tickets through Habitat for Humanity East Bay and they'll get $14 for each ticket purchased to help support their mission of eliminating poverty housing, one house at a time. More details on the website (PDF file).
Progress continues on the Thrivent Builds house and others. As you can see in a picture from yesterday, it now has a roof, house wrap and some windows. It'll be getting insulation and siding soon. As part of the Habitat East Bay's green building practices, the insulation is sprayed-in cellulose, made mostly from recycled newspapers. Before that goes in, the cracks around windows, doors and vents are sealed up with spray foam insulation.
I just wanted to give an update on the Thrivent Builds House. It's coming along nicely as you can see in the picture. Today it was getting ducting for HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system.
I also wanted to give a special thanks to Americorps member Tori Hiller, who's a not only spent the year working with Habitat through the Americorps program, but is a Lutheran, too. The current crop of Americorps members are coming up to the end of their term with East Bay. Some will be working through the summer, and a few will be coming back for another year. If you've volunteered at the Edes site, you've probably been led by one of the Americorps members, so give them a big thanks next time you see one!
It was hot again for the final day of the build-a-thon, but not quite as bad as Monday was. We had another good turn out, and while the heat slowed down overall progress, a lot got done on all 20 houses. On house 13, we worked with future homeowner Sergio Navarro. We had a number of first time volunteers who did great. We got the exterior walls on the 2nd floor sheathed, raised and plumbed, and several of the interior walls raised, too.
After some group photos, many of the volunteers and staff headed off to a post build-a-thon party, where we compared our experiences (and scrapes and bruises) and relaxed after a tiring four days. But the build-a-thon was a big success. Over $200,000 was raised to help fund the building of the houses, and a lot of progress was made. Thanks to all who gave of their time and money, and I hope to see you out at the work site sometime soon!
Today at the build-a-thon was a scorcher. Temperatures were in the 90s, and with just the framing of the houses up, there isn't much shade to cool off in. We also had a lot fewer volunteers since it's a work day. So we worked a lot slower, but we still made good progress. The Habitat staff did lots to try to help people keep cool. Besides frequent water breaks, there was a popsicle break, and they set up a mister system under a canopy for us to go cool off in. The lunchtime events involved getting people wet. Tomorrow should be little cooler, but it'll still be hot.
Today was another great day at the Habitat worksite, but it was hot, and tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter. All the houses made good progress, but today we had something special -- a wedding celebration! Kim and Jim met at a Habitat build in New Orleans, and were married yesterday. As part of their wedding celebration, the wedding party came out to the build-a-thon to work. Besides being Habitat supporters, Kim is also a Thrivent member, so Habitat East Bay presented the newlyweds with matching Thrivent Builds hardhats. Kim's sported a veil which she cheerfully wore all afternoon.
