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Steve Thomas is the host of Planet Green's Renovation Nation, a program that focuses on making green renovations to homes across the country. In his regular column on PlanetGreen.com, Steve goes behind the scenes of the show and offers additional tips and insight on green renovation.
If a house is of a historic nature or if it has just been around for a long time, the initial carbon cost of the building has been amortized over many, many years. Preservation, in terms of carbon expenditures, is essentially greener than tearing it down and building something new.
That said, there are certain constraints that often exist in historic districts that limit the amount of renovation that can be performed. That was the case with the Degas House featured on Renovation Nation. Altering the windows in any way, shape or form was prohibited. So we were stuck with the antique windows. The windows make the house look nice and historic, but they aren’t very energy efficient.
In most historic neighborhoods and buildings, you aren't allowed to affect the front façade or any façade. This means you are disallowed from replacing the siding if you wanted to do a rain screen wall. Giving a historic house rigid foam insulation could prove impossible.
The Degas house had its own particular problem. We demoed the wall in order to open it up, and we could have used spray foam insulation. The local historic authority wouldn't let us use the foam, even though it would not have altered the look of the house outside and the house would have benefited from it. They wouldn't go for it. So we didn't do it.
My recommendation, at that point, was to not put any insulation in it at all. There was one layer of clapboard with no sheathing on the outside. Wind-driven rain could work its way up under the clapboard and into the wall system. In that case, the insulation would have gotten wet, causing the wall system to become filled with mold and rot. In the end, I decided that since we can't use waterproof foam, then we should do nothing.
Historic structures are green, because they've been around for a long time, and they are likely to be around even longer. At the same time, they can't be given the ultimate green upgrade due to those historic constraints.
More on Green Renovation:
How to Reclaim a Garage Door
Why Does Geothermal Make Sense To Install at Your Home?
How the Right Storm Door Can Save Energy
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