Really BIG house goes green

COEUR d'ALENE - People on Sunday were streaming through the new home at 2880 Marceille Drive, curious to get a closer look at the house they've got pretty good odds of winning.

The home, valued at $265,000, is north of Hanley Avenue and east of Atlas Road. It is the 2010 Green Raffle Home, constructed by students in North Idaho College's carpentry program.

Five thousand tickets for the 17th annual fundraiser, the Really BIG Raffle, will be sold prior to the July 14 drawing, and tickets are $100 each. All proceeds from the raffle support student needs and programs at NIC. The drawing will be at 7 p.m. at NIC's Fort Sherman Park on campus.

"The odds are wonderful," said Elsie Gowdy of Bayview, who toured the home with her husband, Bob. They bought raffle tickets for themselves and their son's and daughter's families.

"The kitchen has lots of storage," she said. "And I like the sliders the way they go off the kitchen to the patio."

The home - both Energy Star and U.S. Green Building Council certified - has 1,400 square feet of floor space on the main floor, and more than 700 square feet on the upper floor. It has two bedrooms, a master suite upstairs, and two bathrooms. There's no basement.

Adding the energy efficient components to the home was beneficial to the NIC carpentry students, who used building the house as a "working laboratory." Learning to build to the specifications of the Energy Star requirements has provided working knowledge to the students that will be important when they start working in the housing sector.

Dallas Chaffin, 19, one of the NIC carpentry students who worked on the home, said putting in the trusses was the best part for him.

"You're up on ladders and scaffolding moving those big trusses around," Chaffin said. "That was the most fun."

If it was his house, he said, "I would really like the vaulted ceilings upstairs."

This year's home includes a Carrier hybrid heating and cooling system, fluorescent lighting, energy efficient appliances and systems, an upgraded insulation package, water saving plumbing fixtures and Jeld-Wen high-efficient windows.

As a certified green home, most components of the home were chosen due to their low impact on the environment and indoor air quality. Featured inside the home are environmentally friendly trends in flooring such as marmoleum instead of vinyl, low VOC (volatile organic compounds) paints, recycled building materials and eco-friendly adhesives. VOCs are emitted as gases from certain solids and liquids, and some might have short- and long-term adverse health effects.

Vanetta Hook, who has entered the drawing every year, said, "It's really a nice home. I'm thinking it would cost a fortune to get it furnished."

Hook, of Spokane, no longer owns a home, but did for 15 years, she said. If she won she'd move in with her son, who's looking to go to college.

"I'd love to own a home again," she said.

Hook was touring the home with her friend Mary Ann Swift, also of Spokane.

"I like the garage on the back of it," Swift said. "A lot of homes look like one great big garage, and where's the house?"

The large front porch is much nicer to look at out front than garage doors, she said. She did think the living room area should have been a bit larger, and that maybe the kitchen was hogging too much space on the main floor.

Swift thought the rock fireplace and rock used on the front porch added a lot to the home's look.

The 2010 Green Raffle Home is the grand prize in the Really BIG Raffle. Other major prizes in that raffle include a $20,000 car, a $10,000 boat, a $3,500 vacation package, and a $2,000 shopping spree. The NIC Foundation conducts the raffle.

The public can view the home from noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday, June 6 and June 13.

Information: 769-3271 or www.nic.edu/rbr