making the Green Triple Decker real

once we were awarded one of the five pilots to take our 1905 triple decker from HERS 135 (or worse - the lower floors had even worse HERS ratings than we did on the 3rd floor) to HERS 65 or better, we needed a plan.  we sat down and developed some ideas about how to cut energy consumption while at the same time improve the living conditions of the building and make it a more comfortable home.

in a case like this we were trying to balance wants versus needs and think about the project as individual components and as a whole.  wants versus needs is a tough one for anyone doing design and construction work.  we needed to make a proposal and define a scope of work that would hit HERS 65 and there were some general guidelines set forth by the City which included specific targeted items such as insulation and systems as well as some bare minimums we needed to attain, but the specifics were up to us.  we could, if it made sense financially and otherwise, choose a completely unique route to get from 135 to 65.  that route could be replacing some or all of the systems, replacing some or all of the exterior of the house, insulating some or all of the house, etc.

not only were we choosing our own route, we were also working as three individual condo owners deciding what to do to our entire house.  it might be that what makes sense for one floor makes less sense (or even no sense) for another.  for example, the third floor had recently been renovated to add new electrical and all of the interior walls and ceilings were intact.  the first floor was part way through a gut renovation that included removing all interior plaster.  this meant that blowing insulation from the inside could be "easy" for the first floor, but would create havoc on the 3rd.  similarly, we needed to insulate the roof.  blown insulation was chosen as the best solution, but we (the 3rd floor) did not want to poke a hole in every single joist bay in every ceiling of our condo.  so we had to develop a strategy to achieve the insulation value we needed/ wanted without unnecessarily inconveniencing any one specific unit owner and making unnecessary work (patching holes in poorly done popcorn ceiling is pretty much impossible and expensive).

the project strategy was simple: aim for the most valuable (energy wise) items first.  scope items with big impact on energy reduction are more valuable than lesser (or more expensive) ones.  for example, super insulating the house (built in 1905 with almost no insulation) is a huge improvement in energy need in both summer and winter.  it's not glamorous, but it gets the job done.  after tackling the biggest items (basically the exterior/ shell of the building), we aimed inward at the major systems (heating, cooling, hot water, etc).  the third and final category of our project would be the interior and the users (this includes everything from ceiling fans to dual flush toilets and low flow fixtures to CFL or better bulbs).  approaching the project in this manner (from big to little and from outside to inside) helped us make important decisions about where to invest our resources.

now that we've painted a bigger, overall picture, I will start to talk about specific strategies and scope of work, focusing first on the shell and exterior of the building.  stay tuned!

I'm back!

Hello folks!  I'm baaaack!

after an entire year without posting on this site, I am officially back.  much has happened over the last year in my personal and professional life so there's quite a bit to share with you.  thanks for sticking with me while I worked through some of the most exciting and joyous challenges in my life so far.  I look forward to reconnecting with you and telling you all about my adventures both in Scandinavia and back home in Boston.

speaking of Boston, I'm back living in a triple decker in jamaica plain.  triple deckers are the most common type of housing in Boston.  in fact, tens of thousands of these homes were built in the first twenty five years of the twentieth century in and around Boston and New England.  simply designed, well built, and economically viable, this style of house flourished during that time period and continues to be an important part of residential living today in the Hub.  in neighborhoods like Jamaica Plain, often called "streetcar suburbs", these houses account for the vast majority of the housing stock.  they have held up well over the years and are often converted into condos.

our (soon to be) green triple decker in Jamaica Plain at the beginning of the deep energy retrofit

our condo is a 1,000 square foot space comprising the entire top floor of a three decker built in 1905.  before it was converted into a condo in the 1990's, the owner turned it into a three bedroom apartment, maximizing the rent potential.  rent prices, neighborhood demographics, and questionable decisions by the building owner led to the decline of the building.  at one point it had a leaky roof, mold growing in the walls, and a tenant suing the owner.  it seemed on the brink of collapse.  after a series of events including foreclosures and lawsuits, a thoughtful, forward thinking real estate lawyer came along and revitalized the ailing condo association and purchased the second floor unit.

the first floor, easily in the worst condition of the three, was purchased soon after, opening the door for a sale of the top floor.  suddenly we found ourselves handing over a check with our entire life savings to buy a beaten up condo.  since buying the condo more than three years ago, we've re-spent that initial "life savings" several times and completely renovated the inside and outside of the house.  one of the most exciting parts of this work is the overall building project that the three condo units tackled together.  this project, called a "deep energy retrofit" involved drastically improving the energy efficiency of the entire property.  it took more than a year of planning and preparation, quite a bit of teamwork and know how, and a grant from the City of Boston and the local energy companies to make it all happen.

rather than hit you over the head with all of this in one post, I will put together a series of posts, each explaining one aspect or theme of the project, hopefully making the subject interesting and digestible.  so... please let me know if you want to hear more about any specific aspects of the planning, design, construction, sustainable initiatives and strategies, or even just how the heck we survived renovating our entire home, inside and out, while living in in.  I will do my best to paint a relatively accurate picture of both what we did and how we did it.

as always, thanks for reading.  enjoy!