Schuyler Habitat dedicates its first new home

MONTOUR FALLS--Schuyler County Habitat for Humanity dedicated their first completed home Sunday, Nov. 1. Located at 130 Havana Glen Road in Montour Falls, the project is a culmination of not only two years of physical construction, but also nearly a decade of organization effort.
Vice President Marcia Douglas said the organization started some 10 years ago with the idea of building in Schuyler County. She said it took almost eight years to get people really motivated about the project. Douglas was the person who donated the land that was used for the first build.
Scott Spaulding and his daughter Rachel are the partner family for this project. The group is hoping to have the partner family move into the building during the early part of December, so they can be settled in time for the holidays. The house has three bedrooms and has been insulated and prepared for solar should the family choose to install it at a later point.
"Their heating and cooling bills should be very minimum," Douglas said. "Theoretically if the house sits the way it is, when we are finished with it the house should be about 70 degrees year-round."
Douglas also noted the Boy Scout troop out of Odessa built a shed on the property as part of an Eagle Scout project. Douglas estimated over the two-year build period, 50 to 60 total volunteers have worked on the house. She noted there was also a core dedicated crew of a dozen volunteers who worked on the house throughout the project.
"The hardest part of the build was probably all the detailed finishing work," Douglas said. "That takes people who have got really good skills."
She said many of the volunteers enjoyed the first few weeks when they got to see the form of the house take shape and put the roof on the building.
"Everyone was excited that it was closed in so that they could work during the winter," Douglas said. "That was probably the best part right there. It doesn't look like much when it was just a hole in the ground."