By PEG ARMITAGE

The McKernon Group in Brandon is enjoying a growing reputation for recycling parts of old barns for use in new homes.

For instance, the design/build company is about to use timbers from a dismantled barn in Brandon in a new house in Fayston. The firm may be even better known for routinely including energy-efficient components and alternative-energy systems in its plans.

Recently, the company’s construction of a new house with handicapped and green-energy features was finished in just one week for a Jamaica, VT family. That project put the McKernon Group on the front pages of numerous U.S. newspapers and trade magazines. The story was also the subject of a television show.

Kevin Birchmore, company vice president, said a new residence under construction in Ascutney during the summer will boast efficient energy components — as well as a basement root cellar to store winter vegetables from the client’s garden. The ceiling of the Ascutney house will have hooks for curing hams and other meats.

Project manger Rob Ekstrom noted root cellars are becoming a must-have item among Vermonters determined to buy and store locally grown foods as well as their own.

Plans for the 7,500-square-foot house combine the client’s ideas with the expertise of McKernon architect Adam Pelkey. From the outset, plans called for plenty of windows for passive solar gain on the south-facing side, which overlooks a valley and mountains beyond. The front steps have locally-made wrought-iron railings.

Pelkey had to site the new house so it would go up only six feet from the client’s existing house. While habitable, the old house was smaller, less attractive and less efficient than the new one. The old structure was demolished piece by piece, and everything was _salvaged for recycling elsewhere.

“Windows, doors, floors, hardware, plumbing, siding, foundation materials – everything” was sold to ReNew, a recycler in Brattleboro, said Birchmore. Taking the old house down after the new one was finished demanded that Pelkey precisely locate its foundation.

Room for part of the basement was blasted out of rock in the hillside at the rear in order to stabilize the temperature in the root cellar. To isolate it from the house’s heat, Birchmore said the inside walls are well insulated and enclosed with Densarmor, a mold-repelling USG sheetrock. Two outer wall vents keep the air circulating at temperatures that are even with that of the surrounding ground.

Ekstrom and Pelkey satisfied the client’s desire for a living room that looks like a grand maple sugar house. Its soaring fireplace wall and chimney were built by Frontline Masonry of Rutland, with fieldstones in nearby stone walls.

Floors are reclaimed elm planks from a Massachusetts warehouse. What looks like an original open rooftop steam vent is enclosed with glass panes to shield from weather while letting in daylight.

The siding is 1880s-vintage pine clapboards that McKernon crews salvaged from the old barns on the Williams Farm in Rutland Town. Their old red paint, weathered to a soft tone, blends nicely with the cedar clapboards that cover the rest of the house and are finished with Cabot’s Australian Oil. The house will need single coats applied every five years, Birchmore said.

For the kitchen, Bristol lumber mill owner Tom Lathrop supplied cherry wood timbers to be left exposed in the walls and ceiling.

The house is so tightly insulated and sealed that the fireplace chimney needed an air duct from outside with a fan and baffle so smoke and stale air can be drawn out, Birchmore said.

The client wanted heating and cooling systems to be 50 percent independent of the electrical grid, both for energy efficiency and concern about responsible environmental stewardship.

The McKernon Group leaves installation of heating, cooling, electrical and plumbing components to subcontractors. Wilbur Electric in Rutland and Excel Plumbing in Mendon installed these units in the Ascutney house. Wragg Brothers Well Drilling in Ascutney built the Independent Air Supply brand geothermal heating and cooling system, which consists of five 330-foot dry wells. Air exchange vents in the kitchen and behind the fireplace circulate the air coming through an eight-inch pipe from the wells at a constant temperature.

Built-in passive solar collection materials and photovoltaic solar panels will heat all household water.

Ekstrom said the construction and demolition phases are scheduled to be completed this year.