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Virtual HabiTour

"None of the volunteer leaders were professional builders. It is a hobby for us."
Chris Jackson on the saw
More Related Information:
Costs of Building Habitat Homes

Gary Akin, Construction Co-Chairman and Vice President

Thank you for visiting the Virtual HabiTour. I hope to meet you in person at one of our tours on the first Saturday of every month. I want to share a little information with you on how we have developed a process to home building.

We build basically two floor plans, 3 or 4 bedroom, and by consistently building only a couple of plans, we can streamline the building process and control our costs with our wide variety of volunteers and supervisors.

We work hard to plan the building activity to best suit the skills of our volunteers so that at the end of the work day, a volunteer can look back and say, "W O W! Look what we did this morning! This was just a slab of concrete, now the walls are up and ready for roofing."

While all this building is going on, several people are working to maximize donations of materials. Our construction manager is coordinating the contractors and to keep the work moving. We use licensed contractors for difficult tasks like the foundations, plumbing, hvac, electrical and drywall.

We use a note large board to lay out tasks to be accomplished each work day. We get volunteers and homeowners to choose the task of their liking and work that project all day. We do strategic planning as we have an idea of the groups coming and try to tailor to the expertise of these groups.

We usually have 20 plus people framing walls, they spread them out all over the place and it comes together like one big jig saw puzzle. Each crew has a red hat or experienced volunteer as a leader.

A typical chronology begins with a contractor laying out the foundation. Then a volunteer crew will erect the trusses. The next week, with 10 to 15 volunteers and good supervision, we could have a roof in one day. The next Saturday, we would begin raising the walls. Then a later crew would start with the siding. We often have 4-6 projects at different stages of construction and have crews working simultaneously on all of them.

You might be interested to know that other than the few licensed contractors we use in some of the skilled areas, the rest is done by volunteers, like the many cheerful volunteers in these pictures. Another worthy note: none of the volunteer leaders were professional builders. It is a hobby for all of us.

It sounds simple as I have described it, but the process works. In October, many of our supporting churches ministers raised the walls on one home in a day. We were impressed as the thing most pastors do best is talk, not swing a hammer. But, believe me, that day they did both.

I am sure you can tell, we are quite proud of what we do here. We've complete 60 houses and helped 60 families to improved living conditions in just 12 years, building only 2 days per week with volunteers and partner families.

It is amazing what people can accomplish with the right partnerships.