Abandoned Home Goes Green In Tulsa

Chris Howell, NewsOn6.com

TULSA, OK --When Tulsan Chad Burden bought the abandoned house next door he knew it was a wreck. It was filled with garbage and needed to be totally restored. Chad decided to not only to restore the dilapidated midtown home, but to attain a rare dual-certification of Leed-H and NAHB National Building Standards, two green-building codes assuring the home meets the highest of standards of sustainability.

"Anybody can remodel and anybody can build, but there are some standards you can go by to make a home certified green," said Burden.  "Energy efficiency, building materials use, indoor air quality, water use, outdoor landscaping, plants that are native that don't use a lot of water, and so taken in aggregate the home becomes more sustainable."

Burden is in OSU Tulsa's Environmental Science graduate program, and the restoration of the house is the main focus of his master's thesis project.  The process of meeting the "green" standards of both LEED and NAHB is often complicated.  Chad is documenting the process through his thesis, a web site and a display in the front yard of the midtown home.

"The point of this project is to get my hands on everything," Burden said.  "Normal people would just have a roof or insulation or countertops and I'm trying to figure out where to get those products locally and teach people where they can those services and service providers."

Burden hopes to have the home completed by October.

Visit the web site Chad has created to see the project's progress.