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by Don Shelby
Minnetonka, Minn. (WCCO) ― As part of Project Energy, Don Shelby has been giving viewers a tour of the work to renovate an old home in Minnetonka, Minn. to something that is cutting edge green.

Shelby:
Hi everybody we're back in this little old greenhouse in Minnetonka, a 1947 rambler, and what they're trying to do here is make it not only updated, they want to make it the most special energy-efficient house in the United States.

This is an important day and to help us understand more about that Keith Poets, general contractor on this. Keith, good to see you again. How are you?

Poets, with Live Green, Live Smart:
Good to see you again Don. I'm well.

Shelby:
Why is this the most important day?

Poets:
Well, it's a very important part of the process in creating a very energy-efficient home. In my mind, this type of insulation is going to be one of the most important aspects of really well-made energy-efficient homes going forward. I think it will be the standard setter from here on forward.

Shelby:
A lot of homes get too tight, a lot of moisture builds up, mold starts to develop. How does this prevent that from happening?

Poets:
What happens in wall cavities is if you have air exchanging, you have warm moist air that is drawn into the air cavity and it reaches the cold outer wall, condenses, and the water goes down and that's where you get your mold problem.

This eliminates the cold surface completely, so you get no condensation. That's a really big part of this, but as far as technical aspects, I would defer to my friend over here.

Shelby:
Hi, I'm Don Shelby.

Lee Juvland:
Hi, Lee Juvland, Barrier Spray Technology.

Shelby:
All right, I hate to do this, but give me your sales pitch.

Juvland:
Well, I'll tell you, I have this in my own house of course and I live out on top of a hill in a field. No trees around and heat with propane and my heating bills on average are about half that of my neighbors. My whole house is foam. With our case studies, we have a savings in energy, a total energy bill, of somewhere between 30 and 80 percent.

Shelby:
Wow.

Juvland:
Now that's a big number, but even on the conservative side you're saving a third, so that makes your payback time somewhere between 4 and 7 years and you reap the benefits for a long time after that.

Shelby:
Now this house has been torn down to the studs, but can you can come in and do this kind of work to a house without disturbing the integrity of the house itself?

Juvland:
Not really from the interior. We do several homes from the exterior and we have a lot of mold issues that come around the Twin Cities and so what we do is from the exterior, they take off the siding and the sheathing. We pull out the fiberglass, the plastic, do any mold remediation or repair to the framing. We foam from the outside, then the house gets put back together.

Shelby:
Well thank you very much for all of your help ... look who's out here. Peter Lytle, the man who's in charge of the whole thing. It's good to see you ... is this a show house, a model home, or is this for people to live in?

Lytle, Executive Director of Live Green, Live Smart:
It's going to be lived in, but it is also an educational laboratory. We're going to be testing a lot of different components. If you look up on our roof up here, you're going to see our solar cells. This is how we're going to be heating the hot water for our house.

We're sharing all this information on our Web site with anybody that wants to come and find out what windows we used, what flooring we used, what insulation systems we used, so they can make their own determination on what components they want in their own green project.

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