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Systems Built Home, Church Makeovers Get Extreme
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Four hundred volunteers helped rebuild a home that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina on the season finale of "Extreme Makeover." |
Building Systems Councils member Deltec Homes, Inc., a panel and component manufacturer based in Asheville, N.C., recently completed the makeover of a home and church destroyed by Hurricane Katrina for ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." The rebuilding project, which involved manufacturing and installing nearly 700 building system components, will air Sunday, May 18 as the show's two-hour season finale.
Joe Schlenk, Deltec’s sales and marketing director, said the show’s producers specifically contacted Deltec for the project — rebuilding a 4,000-square-foot home of the Usea family and the 3,000-square-foot Noah's Ark Missionary Baptist Church in Westwego, La. just outside of New Orleans ― because the company boasts that it never lost a home to a hurricane or high winds.
He said eight company-built homes were in the path of the hurricane when it cut its devastating path through Louisiana, Mississippi and other parts of the South in 2005. The hurricane caused some minor cosmetic damage to the Deltec homes, but no structural damage, he said.
Deltec engineers its homes and panels specifically for the jurisdictions where they will be built, Schlenk said. For example, the homes the company builds for the New Orleans area are engineered to withstand high winds.
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Deltec panels, components and "radial engineering" were used to make the Usea family home hurricane resistant. |
The home and church rebuilt during the “Extreme Makeover” episode use “radial engineering” to disperse energy and wind pressure throughout the structures to make them highly resistant to damage by high winds, Schlenk said. “There is a lot of technology in the structures,” he said, while noting that this type of engineering and construction greatly reduces the potential for serious damage in coastal environments.
Deltec manufactured 108 wall panels, 300 floor trusses and 276 roof trusses for the “Extreme Makeover” rebuilding effort. It took the company 2,640 man-hours to build the components. Four hundred volunteers helped install them.
“Extreme Makeover” budgets 106 man-hours each episode to rebuild a home. “Without systems building, you couldn’t undertake a project of this magnitude,” Schlenk said of the Westwego project.
About 300 Deltec employees and friends will gather at the Ashville factory on Sunday to watch the season finale.
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The newly-finished home of the Usea family of Westweago, La. |
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The newly-finished Noah's Ark Missionary Baptist Church. |
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