By Dawn Fluhler

Many have asked what will happen in the long-term for the family who has ongoing medical bills, and now a bigger home to maintain. Though the new home came at no cost to the family, utilities and home maintenance were not included.

Fortunately, the community, sponsors and builder planned ahead to help the family.

A charity auction during build week raised more than $18,000 for the family to use toward home and medical expenses. Dr. Tavel Optical Group donated 15 years of eye care to the family. This is a significant contribution, valued at more than $30,000. And Ball State University awarded four-year, full-tuition scholarships to each of the four Cowan-Brown children. At today’s tuition rate, these scholarships have a total value near $120,000.

As for the home, Hallmark Homes home has included its standard warranty on the Cowan-Brown home. This includes a 2-year workmanship warranty and a 10-year structural warranty covering anything normally covered under the RWC National Warranty Guidelines. Hallmark will perform a 30-day, 11-month and 23-month walk-through with the family.

The new home was built with energy efficient lighting, circuit breakers and surge protection that is intended to reduce related energy bills by as much as 85 percent. Installation of all new Energy Star appliances will reduce their related energy costs by up to 50 percent.

The build also included a geothermal closed loop heating system. This type of system works by extracting ground heat to warm the liquid contained in the heating system pipes. The warmed liquid requires less electric energy to reach the desired temperature, reducing total energy costs.

Perhaps the most impressive cost-cutting measure is the installation of a wind turbine that can produce enough energy to power a 2,000 square foot home. It is expected to cut the Cowan-Brown family’s energy bills by 30 to 80 percent, depending on their energy usage.

See the blog’s Sponsors section to read about the different companies that gave generously to the Cowan-Brown home build.