This Old House

Weston; A Prefab Timberframe Project House Begins (30x1)

Air date: Oct 02, 2008

For the new season, host Kevin O'Connor and master carpenter Norm Abram reveal that This Old House will be building new—a prefab, eco-friendly home that will feel like an old barn. Homeowners Amy & Pete Favat love their land, but have outgrown their 1970s-era home, so they'll deconstruct the old house to make way for a new one that will better suit their active family. To achieve their vision of a vacation home "all year round", custom homebuilder Tedd Benson and his staff are designing and prefabricating the new state-of-the-art timberframe home, with general contractor Tom Silva pulling it all together on site. To see how Tedd's panelized system looks in the field, Norm and Tedd visit a recent project in Center Harbor, New Hampshire, while back in Weston, Tom works with deconstruction contractor John Grossman to take the old house apart by hand, in a way that saves landfill space, and allows the reuse of building materials. Meanwhile, landscape contractor Roger Cook meets with conservation commissioner Brian Donahue to learn about the brook that flows through the property, while John Engwer and his crew install a new eco-friendly alternative to hay bales and silt fence to protect it—it's organic mulch and compost wrapped in hemp to form a protective barrier during construction. By the day's end, a truck's worth of salvaged building materials has been harvested, and the project is well underway.