[MassHistPres] Cost-Conscious Historical Renovations?

[Dennis De Witt]

Wendy

Did you see this posting a few months ago?  Note the reference below  
to Conservation Services Group.  I believe they are working for NStar.

The energy side of this equation could have been addressed with Harvey  
Tru Channels

Dennis De Witt


For those who didn't see it, below is an article entitled "So its time
to button up" from the 10/12/02 Boston Sunday Globe's "Homes" section.


It is about making homes more energy efficient.  At the top of the
article is a diagram showing the cost, savings payback periods of
various energy saving investments.  Note the last item:

Air Sealing — payback:2.5 years
Storm doors and storm windows — payback 13-15 years
Door weather stripping — payback 2.5 years
Aircrete foam wall insulation — payback 6.5 years
Cellulose attic floor insulation — payback 9 years
New furnace of boiler — payback 8 years
Replacement windows — payback up to 33 years
		(That's longer than the lifetime of the insulating glass!  Note the
6th paragraph from the bottom below)

These are said to be average numbers based in information from
Conservation Services Group, a non-profit entity which does energy
audits.

The following is the text of the article — less a deleted section on
financing:

  So, this is the year you're finally going to bring your house in
from the cold? You're not alone, and there's help available from many
places to narrow the number of winterization choices to the most
effective, and steer clear of the costly.  Despite the retreat in oil
prices, heating fuel costs remain high - home heating oil, for
example, is in the mid-$3-a-gallon range.

Numbers like these were the tipping point for Brookline resident
Rebecca Mailer-Howat. Her household held off for years before spending
thousands of dollars last month on an energy-efficient retrofit of
their 1870s Colonial Revival. The Mailer-Howats started with an
ecologically friendly insulation foam called Aircrete, which was blown
inside the walls of the house, and then expanded to fill in airways
and hidden gaps and holes. Next the family plans to upgrade its hot
water system, and add solar panels.

"I always wanted to do it, but circumstances have indicated that we
should hurry up," Mailer-Howat said. "And everything's just going to
keep getting more expensive."

Like Mailer-Howat, homeowners hoping to dodge the winter heating
bullet should get going now. But be cautious about spending large sums
on big-ticket projects that may do little to lower your bills.

Bruce Harley, technical director at the nonprofit efficient energy
consultant Conservation Services Group, said there are multiple ways
homeowners can cut heating costs by themselves. He divides home
winterization into four primary elements: insulation, air sealing,
ductwork, and heating equipment.

"I liken insulation and air sealing to the sweater-windbreaker
analogy. Neither one alone is going to keep you warm on a chilly day,
but put them together and it's a really good system," said Harley, who
has authored two books on home energy-saving projects. Filling walls
with cellulose, foam, or fiberglass insulation can boost the house's R-
value (the measure of its thermal resistance) from an insulation-free
3, to a whopping 12. But air leaks - gaps, slits, and other hidden
openings - throughout a house can defeat that improvement. "Ideally
the contractor seals leaks as part of the prep for insulation," Harley
said. "Of course, some contractors understand this much better than
others."

Finding those air leaks, however, is not always easy. They are
sometimes behind walls, along chimneys, or in dark and hard-to-reach
spaces in the attic or in the basement where the house foundation
meets the sill.

And, because some of these gaps can be tucked away doesn't mean they
are small. According to Hurley, they can be "large enough to put your
arm or head through; even newer homes often have large air leaks that
render insulation practically useless." These gaps can be plugged with
a variety of foams, or other insulation and even closed off with sheet
metal.

While most New England homes are spared the expense of energy loss via
ductwork, Harley said, sealing such pathways where they do run -
typically in crawl spaces or garages - becomes critical to capturing
the benefits of new insulation.

And that leaves the heat generator itself; the hardware in the
basement. "If your furnace or boiler is more than 20 years old,
chances are it's reaching the end of its service life," Harley said.

Homeowners can realize enormous savings by replacing old systems with
modern, certified high-efficiency boilers and furnaces. Though they
run into the thousands of dollars, new heating systems will yield
immediate savings in fuel consumption, savings that can pay for the
upgrade within 10 years.

But Harley and Berry cautioned homeowners to think twice about some
big ticket items - chief among them are new replacement windows. Often
the costs of the new windows far outweigh the savings they deliver.
"When you look at the amount of space your windows take up compared to
the overinsulated portion of wall space, it is most likely cheaper and
more cost effective to add additional insulation to a wall," Berry said.

For far less money - as much as half the price - new exterior storm
windows can be a smart investment in increasing the efficiency of
aging windows, because they slow the loss of heat from inside and
reduce air leakage. Meanwhile Harley identified other energy
efficiency measures that don't pay off, including duct cleaning (as
opposed to sealing), fan-fold insulation board used in typical re-
siding projects, and anything marketed as "reflectivity" or radiant
barrier.

These include thin insulation with foil layers and, believe it or not,
paint. "They always have hugely inflated claims for R-value, which are
simply not justified by physical reality, Harley said.

For some homeowners, conventional costs are not the only
consideration. The Mailer-Howats wanted to use environmentally
beneficial products, so for insulation, they chose Aircrete, a
magnesium oxide expanding foam, which is fireproof and nontoxic, over
the more common blown-in cellulose insulation. Aircrete costs $2.70-
per-square-foot, compared to $1.40 or more for cellulose.

"We always wanted to do this, but what we wanted was something that
made sense ecologically and environmentally, that didn't have any
toxic complications," said Patrick L. Mailer-Howat, as workers from
All Weather Green Insulation scaled ladders at his home in preparation
for the installation.

"We're not bleeding heart, naive hippie children," added Mailer-Howat,
who is chairman of Vita Bio Group, a biomass energy development
business. "We are interested in being proactive in our husbandry of
resources, with an outlook to a mid- to long-term future. I mean this
is my retirement home."

For those who didn't see it, below is an article entitled "So its time
to button up" from the 10/12/02 Boston Sunday Globe's "Homes" section.