Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

This is the SunSmartPV Net Zero Energy Home that LifeStyle Homes built (in just 155 hours) for the wonderful Hurston family as part of the ABC-TV hit reality show, EXTREME MAKEOVER: Home Edition.

Yes, you read this right! With an awful lot of wonderful help from financial contributors, materials suppliers and tradecraft friends, LifeStyle Homes built the home pictured here in just 155 hours. That’s just under 6.5 days, and to get it done, everybody worked in shifts, 24-6.5!

The incredibly short build time is one EXTREME thing about this home. Another is that it is the first Net Zero Energy Home to be featured on EXTREME MAKEOVER: Home Edition. As a matter of fact, that is why LifeStyle Homes was asked to build this EXTREME home. We are by far the most experienced builder of high performance homes in Brevard County, and the producers of the show reasoned that nothing could be much more EXTREME for their chosen family than to provide them with free electricity for life!

That is the magic that a Net Zero Energy Home can do for you, too! When the Sun is shining, a NZEH produces far more electricity than it needs. The surplus is automatically sold to the power company. When the Sun isn’t shining, electricity is purchased from the power company just like normal. Over a year’s time, the money received from the power company balances the money paid, so a Net Zero Energy bill results.

Free electricity for life is what the Hurston family is enjoying at this very moment. Who could be more deserving? Joe and Cindy Hurston and their three children have devoted their lives to helping others, most recently by using their own plane to fly water purification machines of their own design and manufacture to give to the earthquake ravaged people of Haiti.

It was that extraordinary service which caught the attention of the TV show’s producers. Since LifeStyle Homes had just recently announced the completion of our first SunSmartPV Net Zero Energy Home, they contacted us in the fall of 2010 to see if we would be interested in building a Net Zero Energy Home for the Hurston family. Who could refuse such an request? 

The home you see was constructed in early January, 2011, and the EXTREME MAKEOVER: Home Edition episode it was featured in first aired on Sunday evening, February 13, 2011. Please look through the photos and videos we have assembled here for your enjoyment. This was a very big undertaking, as you will see. Then, please join us in thanking all the contributors. This wonderful thing would never have happened without their support. But most of all, please thank the Hurston family for their service to humanity, either in person or in your prayers.