COHASSET — It was a cool, cloudy, early November day, but you didn’t even need a jacket inside the half-finished Habitat for Humanity house in Cohasset.
Drywall had gone up a few days earlier, as the white-splattered concrete floors showed. The 1,200-square-foot home was kept comfortable by two small portable heaters.
“Realistically, without any heat source in this house right now, we could probably turn on a hair dryer, and it would heat this whole building,” said Jamie Mjolsness, executive director of Itasca County Habitat for Humanity.
Energy efficiency is one of the big reasons that the nonprofit undertook this new building project: a net-zero home.
The nonprofit broke ground on the Cohasset net-zero home in May and began another in Grand Rapids in October.
Net-zero sounds more technical than it is in practice. It really just means that you likely won’t have an electricity bill.
“The way you’re achieving that is just largely good insulation, great windows, and then really the blessing on hitting net-zero is having that solar component as well,” Mjolsness explained.
With the solar panels — paid for with a Minnesota Power grant — the family should actually make about $40 a month, because the excess energy they generate is sold back. That will hopefully be enough to cover the cost of their water and electricity bills. Even without solar panels, it would still only cost about $1,200 a year to run the home.
Those savings can then help ease the burdens of a mortgage, gas, groceries, medications and school supplies: All the other costs that add up before you know it. The extra money could also allow the family to invest in their future.
“There’s so many different things that, by us building this way, I feel, is setting the family up for success,” Mjolsness said.
'More secure and more safe’
Misty Jarvi, Rhys Britt and their daughters Adeline and Claritie lived on this property in Cohasset before applying for Habitat for Humanity.
Their trailer home had gaping holes in the floor, the walls were warped from water damage and there was visible black mold, which was likely causing their youngest daughter’s chronic cough.
“Is ‘astounding’ the right word for it?” Jarvi said. “It’s almost like a miracle-type thing to be selected as a family and to know that our winters are not going to be as rough, and it’s not going to be as cold, and it’s going to be more secure and more safe.”
They had the most people attend their groundbreaking ceremony that Mjolsness had ever seen. That same community has taken time to help build the house: the family’s church, Cohasset Elementary teachers, Jarvi and Britt's Walmart coworkers.
“It’s really fun to see those that are around this family kind of wrap them in their love and come and work on their house,” Mjolsness said.
Jarvi and Britt have worked on the home, too, as well as other Habitat houses in the area. That’s the sweat equity part of Habitat’s model, which also includes an affordable mortgage and financial counseling.
Between their jobs and their Habitat hours, Jarvi said they’ve only really been getting one day off a week.
“It is a lot more than just being given to you,” she said. “You kind of got to be motivated to fulfill those [sweat equity] hours.”
She’s still nervous about the cost of the home, and the energy savings are a welcome benefit. They hope to move in mid-December.
'A much better product’
The idea of a net-zero Habitat house started with a presentation Mjolsness attended.
Sam Friesen of nonprofit Fresh Energy gave a talk on an air handling unit that can also be used to heat a house in place of a furnace. The Cohasset house will be heated with one of those units.
“I reached out to Sam, and I said, ‘Sam, I want to know if these air handling units could work in our Habitat houses,’” Mjolsness recounted. “And he basically came back and said, ‘I really think that you guys should just build this way in general.’”
Building “this way” means triple-pane windows, LED lighting, thicker walls with extra insulation and a thicker slab.
“All the numbers that I pulled prior to building this house for a budget was coming out better than the way we were normally building,” Mjolsness said.
“And so, we’re building a much better house product for this family at a cheaper cost.”
These methods are a growing trend in construction — especially in northern climates — and Mjolsness said building codes are heading that way, too.
That’s part of why Itasca County Habitat for Humanity is featuring the home at its Building for Tomorrow fundraiser. Attendees can tour the house 4:30-6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 18.
The more people see this type of construction, the more will want to build this way, Mjolsness said.
That goes for the other Habitat for Humanity branches in Minnesota and the country.
“I think the more that we can build this way and showcase how well it works and how great it is for the family, not just for the environment, I think it just becomes a no-brainer,” Mjolsness said.
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