FAYETTEVILLE - Kris Westbrook opened his door Saturday morning to find John Coleman and Fayetteville Mayor Lioneld Jordan offering him a free weatherization kit for his home near Walker Park on South College Avenue.
“That is amazing,” said Westbrook, who makes pizzas at the Damgoode Pies restaurant in downtown Fayetteville.
Westbrook said he would put the kit to good use. He has grown increasingly interested in energy efficiency over the past five years as a way to reduce electricity costs. He already recycles, and uses weather stripping and fluorescent light bulbs.
“The less energy you use,the less money you pay,” Westbrook said.
Coleman and Jordan were among 12 volunteers who spent a couple hours Saturday morning knocking on doors in the Walker Park neighborhood in south Fayetteville. The pair distributed 18 weatherization kits to residents in one of the oldest neighborhoods in Fayetteville, Jordan said. To receive a kit, each resident had to complete a form required by a federal Community Development Block Grant.
Volunteers involved in the “Weatherize for Better Lives” event together distributed 55 weatherization kits. The event was organized by the city of Fayetteville and the Energy Corps, a division of AmeriCorps, a federal community service program.
Each kit contained compact fluorescent light bulbs, a weather stripping pack, a caulk gun and caulk tube, a door sweep, a window kit with plastic sheets, thermometers for the refrigerator and freezer, a low-flow shower head, two faucet aerators, and a pack of switch and outlet plates designed to stop drafts.
“We’re working real hard to make people aware of how important it is to weatherize their homes,” Jordan said.
More than 450 homes in Benton, Carroll, Madison and Washington counties were updated to conserve energy through a separate Weatherization Assistance Program that the U.S. Department of Energy created with federal stimulus money from theAmerican Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The program lasted from the spring of 2009 through the spring of 2011.
Jordan, a trained carpenter, has noticed the difference that simple steps such as caulking around windows have made in improving energy efficiency in his 1964 home, he said.
Caulking helps to maintaining a weather-tight seal around windows and doors, preventing unwanted air and moisture from seeping into a residence, according to information provided with each kit. Keeping out unwanted air reduces the energy needed to heat and cool a home.
Parker Higgs, who organized Saturday’s distribution, is working to give away 1,500 weatherizationkits. He works for Energy Corps, which placed him in Fayetteville’s Community Services Division in March. The kits are free to low- to moderate-income households, which would include a family of four earning less than $50,000 a year.
“A lot of people don’t realize where they’re losing energy,” Higgs said.
Higgs did not know the amount of the grant that provided the kits.
Higgs, who graduated from the University of Arkansas in 2009, traded a fouryear stint as a project engineer earning almost $60,000 a year for an 11-month position with Energy Corps at a reduced salary of $12,000.The position with Energy Corps allows him to give back to the community and at the same time develop skills that will help him transition his career toward sustainability engineering, a field that works toward preserving the environment.
“Ever since growing up with recycling programs, that’s been part of my conscience,” he said.
Before Saturday, Higgs had handed out 265 weatherization kits by going doorto-door in neighborhoods, working with community organizations such as Head Start and Trinity Methodist Church and contacting human resources departments of industrial and manufacturing plants.
He hopes to give away 500 kits by the end of the year.
So far he’s had only one door slammed in his face, he said.
“It really is just a struggle to get the word out to people who need to know about it,” he said.
Fayetteville residents can learn more about obtaining free weatherization kits by contacting Higgs at (479) 444-3413 or [email protected].
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 13 on 07/21/2013