UF Solar Decathlon team to use materials from 1870s Fla. house

July 20, 2009
The UF Solar Decathlon team ’s house design for the 2010 Solar Decathlon Europe competition focuses on sustainable materials and adopts passive cooling strategies of early Florida vernacular architecture. So it is fitting that the team reuses materials from a local Florida building to construct a modern, zero-energy house.

In exchange for salvaged materials, the UF Solar Decathlon team is helping Tom Smith and his wife, Edith Williams, deconstruct the McCredie house near Micanopy, Fla.

“We were impressed with their design and their dedication, and we wanted to help further their efforts in this competition,” said Smith, a UF architecture senior lecturer. “Including recycled materials in construction is in the spirit of the competition.”

Built in 1871 by James McCredie and his brothers, the McCredie house is a two-story balloon-framed wood structure clad in horizontal weatherboard siding featuring a broad veranda, four-sided bay window and detached kitchen house (see more images of the house). The house was abandoned from 1963 to 1992, when it was purchased and moved to a new site down the road.

Unfortunately, the new owner failed to maintain the house, and it deteriorated significantly. When Smith and Williams purchased the property last summer, the house was beyond repair.

Instead of tearing it down like many suggested, Smith and Williams chose to deconstruct the house by hand and salvage what they could. On June 8, they began work with local salvage experts The Bearded Brothers, several UF architecture students and members of the UF Solar Decathlon team. They carefully preserved the house’s heart pine flooring; wavy handmade glass; fireplace mantels; and 2-by-4, 2-by-8, and 5-by-8 inch beams. The heart pine materials, from saplings planted in the early 1800s, are rare examples of beautiful, dense wood that is no longer available.

Taking advantage of this often overlooked source of sustainable materials, the UF Solar Decathlon team plans to reuse the flooring and lath recovered from the McCredie house.

“It was a case of perfect timing: the house was coming down, and UF Solar Decathlon team volunteered to help with the process in exchange for materials for their competition project,” Smith said. “The students have been out there through the summer and are committed, hard workers who want to do something important with their school experience.”