Editor's note: this article was originally published on Sunday, November 26, 2006. Courtesy of the Asheville Citizen-Times
 

CANDLER –With the help of college students studying construction and Neighborhood Housing Services of Asheville, a local family will be able to spend the holidays next year in a new home.

Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College students are working to build an approximately 1,200-square-foot modular home to be sold to Neighborhood Housing Services for placement in West Asheville and purchase by a qualified buyer of low to moderate income. The house should be completed before summer.

 Editor's note: this article was originally published on Sunday, March 18, 2007.

ENKA –Ken Czarnomski and his crew of student workers may be building the future inside an old warehouse at the former BASF plant.

In a few months, the Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College students will literally roll out their creation, a 1,250-square-foot home in three separate parts that meets the demanding energy-saving standards of a N.C. Healthy Built Home and the pocketbook of a working family in Buncombe County.

It's like it's on roller skates, said Czarnomski, chairman of A-B Tech's Construction Management Technology department.

The modular home rests on wheeled, steel I-beams, rising toward the sawtooth top of the old warehouse. This spring, the completed house will be trucked to its permanent foundation in Buncombe County.

 Editor's note: this article was originally published on Saturday, May 17, 2008., Courtesy of the Citizen-Times

SHILOH –Community hopes pavilion will offer kids positive alternatives
Frieda Nash believes the children in this troubled community need alternatives to the gangs that are gaining a foothold here, and she decided to do something about it.

"I didn't know a thing about writing grants," she said. "But I wrote one, and I got it."

That grant, from the City of Asheville, paid for the materials to build a pavilion at the community garden on Hampton Street, across from the community center. Students from Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College provided the labor, and the group Bountiful Cities also provided help.

This past year Heath Moody, Carpentry and Construction Management instructor, began mentoring a group of students who are focused on implementing sustainable-based projects on A-B Tech campuses.The projects include environmental education, renewable energy systems and energy efficiency, water conservation, sustainable landscape design, recycling and more organic and local food options on campus.

Classes at A-B Tech are putting sustainability into the curriculum and the community through various projects and classroom exercises on and off campus. 

The Carpentry program teaches students a variety of sustainable building methods, from advanced framing techniques, which use less wood and more insulation for more energy efficient structures, to natural building techniques which utilize local, low-energy embodied materials such as straw, mud, and even waste products like used tires to construct buildings with less environmental impact.

The program uses field trips, multi-media, lecture, and hands-on experience to give students the ability to use modern building science and cutting-edge construction tools and materials to learn a variety of methods, which allows them to compete in the evolving world of construction in a conscience way, according to Instructor Heath Moody.