David: Through a partnership with custom home building company Bensonwood and the Favat family from Weston, Mass., the show found its project: A state-of-the-art timberframe home with extensive use of prefabrication and green technologies coupled with an old New England-style barn exterior.

"This Old House" has been looking to build a new home for a while now, said producer Deborah Hood. "We've been looking for the right opportunity to build new, and this project will allow us to do that in a forward-thinking way using prefabrication and sustainable products and practices," she said in a press statement. "We were drawn to the Favat's desire to build a new house that feels like an old barn."
With the Bensonwood partnership and support from the family, it all came together perfectly for everyone, she added.

Hood and other crew members from "This Old House" were at the Bensonwood facility in Walpole Tuesday morning to film portions of the television show, expected to air in October. During the shoot, homeowner Amy Favat appeared with show host Kevin O'Connor and members of the Bensonwood team to review the 3-D computer visualizations of the property, which includes what the interior and the exterior of the structure will look like once completed.

The software also allows the user to work closely within the limitations at the site and to walk through the virtual house with completely furnished rooms. Favat said the images provided a good visual for the interior, which has a variety of different elements to give it an industrial feel the family was looking for.

Not wanting to overdo the timber designs, Favat said they wanted to incorporate a number of different elements, including concrete, stone and different metals into the house. It was important for the house to be simple and functional, which Favat feels comes through with the combination of timber, iron and stone.

Included with the rustic, earthy look of the stone and metal will be Douglas fir timbers to frame the interior. The design also meets the family's need for more space by having the first floor open into a great hall with a fireplace, which is also open to the kitchen, television area and sitting room.

Favat said she and her husband, Pete, have always been drawn to the barn structure and worked closely with the eight-person design team in order for every specific detail to be noted.

Hesitant at first to appear on the program despite being huge fans of the show, Favat said the family decided to join the production when producers guaranteed them creative control of the house.

"This has been a wonderful chance to work with a great staff of people," she said.

Tedd Benson, founder of Bensonwood, said his business has been an associate with "This Old House" since the early 1980s. Over the past two decades, they have done a number of projects with Bensonwood, he added.

Roughly a year and a half ago, the program contacted Benson to see if there were any interesting projects in the region. He told them about the Favat house in Massachusetts and the partnership bloomed from there.

"We've worked with Tedd Benson and his expert timber framers for years," said O'Connor in a release. "It's exciting for us to see just how far his company has come and how the building industry in general is starting to push the envelope. This project give us the chance to share new ideas about building with our viewers."

Constructing the home

To help the family achieve their goal, officials with Bensonwood have labored in workshops located on company grounds to build 75 percent of the house before transporting the pieces to Weston, a suburb 20 miles west of Boston.

"It's made from the bottom up," said Benson. All the different construction crews have come together during the process to build as much of the structure as possible in the workshops.

"We think of this as a team sport," said Benson, joking about the crews completing the different sectors of the Favat home.

Wall systems and room modules will be fully built and outfitted with the windows and finishes added right in the workshop, said Benson. Along with the company's computer-aided technology, the timber frame will be created by using traditional hand-crafted methods that gives Benson's crew the recognition for their hard work.

According to Greg Boiles, project facilitator with Bensonwood, everything from the electrical parcels in the walls to the plumbing pipes in the floors are being pre-installed before the segments of the house are sent to the Massachusetts site to be assembled.

"As much as can be done here, we do it," said Boiles. The house is projected to be sent to Weston on June 9 with the assembly of the structure expected to take roughly two weeks.

Benson said the show will be a way to feature the structural integrity that will last hundreds of years. This structure is designed to last for generations, he said, and is built to be remodeled.

The wires, pipes and other components have been placed in areas that can easily be changed in the future if the homeowner were so inclined to do so, said Benson. Times change and this house is built with the intention to have changes made to it, he added.

Keeping it green

Along with the contemporary prefabrication techniques, the house will be built with reclaimed and recycled materials.

Incorporating green elements throughout the entire project, the new house will have solar panels for hot water and supplemental power and a rain garden in the back yard to control run off and protect the nearby wetland area of the property.

The roofing shingles are constructed with recycled rubber, the carpet tiles will be made of wool provided by a sustainable supplier and all the lighting and appliances are expected to be energy efficient. Additionally, most of the timber will be made from salvaged or sustainably harvested wood.

Benson said recycled barn boards for the project will be used from a similar structure deconstructed in Maine.

The Favats, an environmentally conscious family, will also have 85 percent of the deconstruction materials from their existing home to be salvaged for reuse with many of them going to a nearby Habitat for Humanity project.

According to Benson, this project brings green and renewable technologies to the forefront although with so much concern about the environment nowadays, consumers should expect them on a regular basis. "To us, these should be standard things," he said.

Source: Chris Garofolo - Reformer.com