Featuring the GeoSpring Hybrid Water Heater

When friends and neighbors demanded “Move that bus” after working a week to surprise Jeremy and Jennifer Williams of Pine Mountain Valley, the couple’s new home was revealed, thanks to “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” – and thanks to Diverse Power Incorporated, which donated materials and manpower to the community-wide effort.

The home remodel aired May 16 as Extreme Makeover’s season finale.

While the weeklong construction took place in February, behind-the-scenes work started in January when Diverse Power employees Scott Sawyer, Chuck Redmond and Jacob Rice attended an informational meeting with Harris County officials who told them Extreme Makeover was coming to town. Rice prepared the engineering plan for new utilities and when demolition and rebuilding began three weeks later, Diverse Power line crews were among the first onsite. Their plan, however, had to be modified in midstream after trees were removed from the lot, leaving a lone utility pole in the barren yard.

“Jacob re-engineered it on the fly and they decided to go underground with the lines,” says Sawyer, marketing services coordinator who adds that Diverse Power crews worked one night to take down overhead utilities and another night to install underground lines, all while maneuvering through a maze of people to get their part of the project done.

“The jobsite was a regular site multiplied by 10 because of the number of people all over the place,” says Sawyer, referencing the some-3,000 volunteers and builders jockeying for position. “But our guys just plugged away, doing their job, and didn’t let the hoopla get to them.”

When their work was done, the linemen refused to let Diverse Power pay them for the after-hours job, preferring to donate their services as others had done. “We wanted to volunteer our time like everybody else,” says Rice.

Diverse Power also modified building specifications that called for regular incandescent light bulbs, switching to compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) in order to save the family money on future power bills. Diverse Power donated 144 CFL light bulbs along with two heat pump water heaters to further reduce electric consumption.

The experience, says Sawyer, reinforced for him what he’s known all along, “that I work for a great company.”

Sundays 8/7c on ABC