Tech Fair Helps Low-Income Home Owners

An unusual competition continues Wednesday in Wausau, with contractors and community action workers vying to see who has the best weatherization skills. The goal is to save money for low-income homeowners.

You could call it the weatherization Olympics. About 300 workers are attending this year’s Technical Exchange Fair and Crew Competition at the Marathon County Fairgrounds.

In a safety competition, a driver backs up his truck into a series of blind turns on an obstacle course. A plywood cutout of a little girl is pushed into the truck’s path, as Tony Tiedemann of Milwaukee’s Social Development Commission looks on. He says, “We got multiple obstacles set up here. We got a little dog that’s going to jump out on them. We got some bicycles set out. We got a little girl that obviously just jumped out here, and there’s deductions based on just how well they do, how well they make it through the course without hitting anything.”

In another building, workers compete to see who can best insulate an attic. Tony Francis of the North Central Community Action Program says the competitors have to think creatively. “They can use anything off their truck. The group that worked on this used a lot of caulk and insulating foam and metal tape to do all their sealing, but not spray foam.That was the whole thing about this competition, that they could not use spray foam. They had to try and think of something else to use.”

Francis says the goal is to help low-income homeowners save money. “That’s what the whole Tech Fair is about: stretching a dollar in this day in our economy in order to help as many people as possible.”

Over the past three years, the Wisconsin Weatherization Program has helped 32,000 low-income families insulate their homes.