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I have to tell you, this is not what I had in mind for the inside of the house. They
say an eco-friendly house can't be built in 150 days for $150,000, and I say it can. I'm
Allen Smith, join me as I push the limits with time, budget and creativity with The
Garden Home Challenge, exclusively on eHow Home. We've gotten a lot rain, a lot of rain.
The weather's been not very cooperative. And I'm excited to say that we've got the roof
going up. You can see it there, the red roof. I'm very excited about that. And it rained
so hard the last couple days, we actually got some water in the house. So, why don't
you come in here, let me show you one of the problems. But thankfully, we purchased the
right products for the inside, so it's not really going to cause much of a problem. So
come on in, I'll show you. So, if you remember back, soon after we got the foundation block
laid, we put the floor joist down. Then after that, we put this product, which was the subfloor.
Well, we got rain inside the house over the last couple of days. And since we have this
product, which is not really conventional plywood. Now, had it been conventional plywood
we would be in big trouble here on this floor. What would happen is it would start buckling
and popping and you would have just this unevenness all the way across the floor. Or if we used
OSD board, like we've done on the walls, if we'd used it on the floor and it got wet like
this, you would see it basically unravel. And it would start on the edges. Here's a
line right here where there's a seam, a seam running here, that's where it would start
breaking apart. But with this product, this Advantech, it has waterproof qualities that
are built into it. You can actually have this stuff under water for 6 months and it will
still hold together. So, I'm really not worried about the fact that we got a big puddle of
water here on the floor. And you wonder: where did it come from? Well, it actually ran down
these side walls, because if you look at the outside of the house, this is a gable end
that comes out toward the south, and so you have valleys. And this water came down here
and here. You can see how moist it is up there. Down these valleys that puddled in this area
here. So, it's a good thing that the guys are here to put the new roof on. So, this
won't be a problem going forward. So, let me get out of this wet area and find a dry
spot here and show you just how this product is put together. You can see these are various
shards of wood here that are pressed into this board. The waterproofing qualities are
integrated, or infused, into these 4 by 8 sheets. Now, what makes this so Green is there
really is very little waste, if any, in the production of this product. Of the trees,
they use pine. They plant 2.5 million new little pine trees every year. And what they
use is the entire log. When you're using shards like this, so you can use every little scrap
to make it. And the fact that this product is so stable and consistent, there's very
little waste on the job site. And the fact that it's not buckling and it's not going
to have to be replaced, that's another great savings. Hey, if you're enjoying following
our progress make sure you tell a friend about it, and check-in regularly. And subscribe
to eHow Home.