The Energy Efficient 1898 House

It seems like every night when we turn on the news, the headlines are related to terrible weather across the country.  No matter where you live, we are all seeing impacts of climate change in our communities.  So as we make updates to the house, we want to do everything we can to reduce its impact on the environment.  And making our home energy efficient and sustainable is also good for our pocketbook!  A well insulated/air sealed home costs a lot less to heat and cool. 

There is a lot of building science involved with creating an energy efficient old home - this is not an area for DIY.  So we started with a visit from our energy auditor - Erik North of Free Energy Maine.  We reviewed our goal: Minimize the use of fossil fuels by creating the right environment to use heat pumps to heat/cool the house, while ensuring good indoor air quality.  That means we need to dramatically reduce air leakage in the house, upgrade the insulation and simultaneously improve air quality.

We've worked with Erik many times in the past and really value his expertise.  We started with a walk through of the entire house, from top to bottom.  And for this house, we didn't bother with a blower door test (which measures how leaky the house is, because duh....it's leaky), since we knew we would be making big changes.  But we did use his infrared camera to look at areas of concern (like that sloped ceiling that doesn't have any insulation in it). 

An infrared camera shows you areas where you have air leaks

The summary of the recommendations and our implementation starts from the bottom up.  I should mention this is a bit complicated, since energy codes, guidelines and best practices require a variety of systems for a truly energy efficient home.  But it's worth a read if you're interested in making your home more energy efficient:

The Basement

This is the most complicated part of the house and will also see the most work (aka $$$).  We need to do two key things - 1) make sure it's dry (which involves regrading the exterior of the house so water flows away from the house, installing a good gutter system and a good dehumidifier; and 2) make sure it's air sealed and insulated.  While getting an old stone foundation to stay dry is difficult, getting it air sealed and insulated can be even trickier - particularly when you have big chunks of granite ledge running through the middle of the basement.

So to get started, we focused on getting the basement dry.  As we complete the exterior renovations, we will install new gutters and do some regrading to move water away from the house (here's our fancy berm to steer water away for now!). 

Bags of topsoil create a temporary berm to keep rainwater from going into the basement

But inside, we needed to seal up the dirt/granite portion of the basement with plastic.  That dirt holds moisture, which permeates the entire house, so eliminating that moisture is a key first step.  We wrapped it in 20 mil plastic and carefully taped to eliminate air leakage. 

This is done after all the electrical, plumbing and heating/cooling lines are run, so it won't get torn up.  The plastic is carefully taped and foam sealed so it will be airtight and contain moisture from the dirt.

  

We also installed plastic piping throughout the basement which will be part of the radon mitigation system.

Then we covered the old rubble stone foundation with 20 mil plastic, so that spray foam insulation can be installed over it.  The spray foam goes right over the wall and down over the plastic sheeting - forming an airtight seal.  That's why some of the walls look a bit lumpy! 

We also spray foamed the sills - where the wood is installed right at the top of the foundation.  This is an area that's responsible for a huge amount of the air leaks and energy loss in an old house.  In a really old house with huge timbers for the sill, it's not advisable to encase the timber in spray foam.  But in our case, so much of the sill has been replaced with new pressure treated wood, we will be spraying it.  

With all the exterior basement walls spray foamed, the basement condensation that makes every New England basement musty in the summer will be a distant memory! 

Exterior Walls

My favorite insulation, hands down, is dense pack cellulose. It is essentially ground up newspaper that creates a remarkably good insulation system with a recycled product.  It also does an amazing job of sound insulation!   

85% Recycled Material!

It takes a truckload of cellulose to insulate all these walls!

Our old house has typical 2x4 construction, which doesn't provide enough space for robust insulation.  We have built-out all of the exterior walls to create the equivalent of 2x6 walls.  That will give us an R value of 22, which is similar to what fiberglass insulation provides, but unlike fiberglass, this will fill every nook and cranny behind the walls.  

The ground up cellulose is fed through long tubes into the house

The folks from Anderson Insulation installed netting over the walls and poked holes into it to blast the cellulose and fill the entire cavity. 

Installing dense pack cellulose into wall cavity

For the new part of the house - the back dormer - we need to follow the new energy code which requires an additional inch of foam insulation on the exterior of the house to eliminate the thermal break (what is that you ask?  Well wood is a lousy insulator, every stud that goes through the wall allows cold air to penetrate via the wood.  Adding foam insulation to the outside of the stud eliminates the flow of cold, thus creating a thermal break).  There are different opinions on this new requirement, some experts say that in our climate it will create a dew point problem in the middle of the wall, which could create condensation and hence rot.  This is a new requirement and at this point I'd like to err on the side of caution and will follow this requirement on the addition, but not the whole house.

Exterior sheathing that's already covered with an in of R5 foam insulation

Attics

The new energy code for our town requires R60 insulation over the ceiling of the addition (that's 18 inches of insulation!).  But we are going to install R60 across the entire attic of the main house.  It simplifies the installation and the attic is one of the most critical parts of a house to insulate.  We will use loose fill, blown in cellulose.   That can't be installed until the drywall ceilings are in place, so it will happen a bit later in the project.

For the vaulted ceiling over the kitchen and a couple of other areas that have funky angled roofs, we used spray foam insulation.  

Spray foam is a great insulator, but it's a nasty product to install and isn't good for our environment.  So I try to minimize its use.  But in this case, it's a necessity and will help our house be warm/cool for many years to come. 

Vaulted Ceiling over the kitchen has spray foam insulation to achieve our R value goals

Heating & Cooling

With everything all nicely insulated, now we need to figure out how to heat and cool the house (cooling - honestly, that's not something we would have considered 20 years ago in Maine, but now it's essential!) .  Our plan is to use heat pumps throughout the house.  

So I will admit it, I hate the look of the mini-split heat pumps hanging on the walls everywhere.  So for the main first floor, we will be installing a ducted heat pump system.  We're working with the folks from Haley's Metal Shop to do the installation.  And with their advice, we decided to do a ducted system for the first floor and mini splits for the upstairs bedrooms (which is great, so when our kids visit, they can all set the temperature they want!!!). 

This is our first experience with a ducted HVAC system, so it was fascinating to see all the ducts get installed in the basement.  

It takes up a lot of space! 

Upstairs, they installed a branch box in an attic space to provide connections for all the bedroom mini-split units.  

It was tight quarters - but they got it all set up!   With the lines in, now we can move forward and they will come back and install the mini-splits  and compressors when the project is almost complete.

Air Sealing and Air Quality 

And last, but certainly not least, we need to do air sealing to ensure a good, tight house.  This is a huge change from the traditional approach that lets a house 'breathe'.  But the only way to truly minimize heating a cooling is to air seal every possible crack and crevice.  And when we are done, we will test how well we did with something called a Blower Door Test.  For new construction, you need to ensure a house has less than 3 air changes per hour as measured during the test.  That can be a challenge with an old house - but we're doing our best to achieve that.  

But when a house is that tight, you need to ensure there is some access to outside air to have good air quality.  That's done by installing an ERV - Energy Recovery Ventilator.  This is a system that pulls air from the outside, mixes it to achieve room temperature, and then pushes that fresh air into the house.  And separately, it pulls stale air out of the house and ventilates to the outside.  It's a key part of a healthy home.

Solar Panels?

One last note - we did look into getting solar panels on our roof.  But unfortunately our largest roof faces the wrong direction.  And the front roof which does face south, is too small - once you provide appropriate setbacks for maintenance - to make it economically infeasible.  We were so disappointed.  We loved the idea of becoming fully sustainable!

Moving Forward

Is this a lot of work?  Sure.  But when you're doing a full gut renovation, it would be foolish not to take these steps to create a house that requires far less energy to heat and cool it each year.  These systems will last for many, many years and we want to get it right.  Now we're looking forward to seeing how all these preparations work in practice! 

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Project Update

At long last, it seems like we're leaving the nasty surprises behind us and we're making progress.  The windows and doors are in - and we can start to see how symmetry with the windows adds to the curb appeal.  Doesn't it look nice?  A couple of the neighbors have said they are happy with the green board and windows, it's still a huge upgrade from the plastic sheeting and mess we've had the last few months 😂

The last of the rear windows went in yesterday once the rain stopped (the sunporch and garage are part of phase 2).  It's so nice to have that complete!

The electricians have arrived and are replacing every bit of wiring in the house.  It's a big job, but as those of you that live in old houses know - a single outlet per bedroom just doesn't cut it anymore!!  

So much wiring and devices!!!

We will sleep better at night knowing that the wiring has been totally updated.  We're also updating the service so we can handle all of the electrical requirements of a modern home.

Plumbing is done - it was a tricky challenge and Nick did an amazing job.  We wanted to hide as much of the plumbing as possible, which is hard to do when you're exposing the beams below the bathroom.  Thanks to his creativity, most of the plumbing will be hidden. 

Here's a rare moment when the kitchen was cleaned up of tools and materials - doesn't it look great?

We passed our inspections last week and now it's on to insulation!  

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Temporary Living - Backyard Spaces

Here in South Portland we typically have tiny little yards.  1/10th of an acre isn't unusual and zoning for most of the town allows you to build 6 feet off of the side lot lines.  So to have a backyard with lots of privacy if pretty unusual!  

This yard is lucky enough to have a beautiful garden in the yard behind this one as well as gorgeous plantings that bloomed all spring.  The brick patio and stone wall provide lots of seating for entertaining.

There are giant lilac bushes next to the garage and in the back yard.  The smell was heavenly!

I've never heard of a beauty bush before, but this one is aptly named - the flowers were amazing.

Beauty Bush

I'm not sure, but I think this is a wild rose that's been pruned into a shrub.  It has beautiful blossoms and last fall it was covered with bright red fruit.

I used another section of the antique lattice on the garage.  It adds such a sweet touch.

The spring rains have gotten everything off to a great start.  Now that the sun has returned, we hope to spend some time outside enjoying our little 1/10 of an acre!

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Temporary Living - Curb Appeal Update

We are so grateful to have a place to live while we complete all the renovations on the 1898 House.  And while the house is perfectly fine as a temporary home, I couldn't resist making some changes.  Perhaps this post should be titled what my husband calls "Can't we just focus one one house at a time?" 😂 After 40+ years of marriage, you would think he'd know the answer to that!

To my way of thinking, the house needed a curb appeal update.  The yellow siding was badly faded and oxidized, it had holes and cracks in lots of places, and it was missing sections of J Channel (which holds the siding securely to the body of the house).  I was worried in a big storm, the wind could rip those sections of the siding right off the house. 

Some sections of siding weren't attached to the house

The roof had also seen better days.  It wasn't actively leaking, but was near the end of its lifespan.

So we started making changes.  We put a new roof on both the house and garage (my rule of thumb is similar to Henry Ford's - any color is fine, as long as it's black). 

The garage roof had several leaks - the new roof made such a difference!

For the siding, I wanted a color that was different than the neighbors.  I settled on Wedgewood Blue, which interestingly enough many of the neighbors refer to as gray.  

Pine Point Home Improvements removed all the old siding and wrapped the house in a house wrap that minimizes air infiltration, while still allowing the house to breathe.  Then they started replacing all of the old siding. 

A key to the project was replacing all the metal window trim as well.  This was a real game changer on the house. If you look at the original photos, you'll see a plastic J channel surrounding them - a cheap, quick way to install vinyl siding.  By installing new metal trim, the end of the siding is hidden behind the window trim, so it looks less like vinyl and more like traditional siding (without all the maintenance!).   In fact, I've had so many people stop by and ask if it's vinyl or wood!

And while we were making these changes, we also needed to update the stone stairs.  They were in reasonably good shape, but needed some repointing.  Chase from CPC Masonry came to the rescue and updated them to look like new!

I didn't want to put shutters back up, but without them, the house seemed a bit plain.  I added window boxes, but it was still missing something. 

A bit plain, don't you think?

Then a lovely friend offered me her antique trellis that she'd saved off of her old house.  She hadn't found a good use for them, and they had been sitting out in the weather for years.   But she thought they might work well.  Wow, was she right!  It took a bit of elbow grease and paint to clean them up, but they're gorgeous now!

I've never had my own window boxes before - so much fun to change them out with each season!

Now I just love the front entry - it's made such a difference (the front door needs a bit of work, once that's done, I'll actually paint it!).  The curb appeal is vastly improved!

Next - I'll share some of the photos from the backyard.  It's so charming! 

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Curb Appeal Progress and Planning

Curb appeal - well, we are seriously lacking that at the moment. The house certainly isn't pretty and it's getting worse by the day!  

As we have found in so many other areas of the house, the exterior was built with bits and pieces of other houses or whatever building materials they had available. 

The ‘clapboards’ that you see on the bottom section of the house are a post Civil War era product called drop siding. Drop Siding was made to nail directly to the studs with a finished face on both the interior and exterior.  It was extremely popular in cottages, where a secondary interior wall wasn't needed.  By the late 1800's it was available in multiple styles.

 It eventually fell out of favor, because the tongue and groove couldn’t be made water tight (especially here on the Maine coast where storms tend to come with horizontal rain off the water). It's problematic for us, because the beveled clapboards don't allow us to install new siding directly over it.  Instead we are going to add a layer of sheathing to give us a continuous, water/air tight exterior. The sheathing will also help provide more structural stability, since so many of the studs are spaced far apart (remember our mantra - "how is this house still standing?").

So what kind of siding will we use for the renovation?  When we purchased the house, it had cedar shingles.  But we like the idea returning the house to its original clapboard style.  And that's the approach we will take, except for the garage, where we can leave the cedar shakes to provide a bit of visual difference from the rest of the house. 

What else are we doing to improve curb appeal?  Well windows are a big, big factor.  The windows were originally installed in an odd pattern and were all different shapes and sizes.  We are changing that!   While we can't make it all look perfectly uniform, this will be a big change.  And with the addition of a lattice panel on the front, it should look pretty nice! 

The other side of the house has also seen changes with new windows on the original house and the dormer.  

It's so much fun to see the plan start to become reality! 

The question I keep getting over and over - "what color will the house be?".  And that's still a point of debate in our household.  Obviously it's been white for many years.  But we have also found old photos that show it was once a dark color.  For now, I'm looking at options and hope to have some plan soon.  I'll share as soon as we have an answer!  

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Creating an Antique Style Kitchen

I've been planning this kitchen since the first day I walked into the house.  When I realized there was a large attic above both the main kitchen and the adjoining service porch, I started dreaming of a spacious kitchen with vaulted ceilings.  

It was a lot of work to open up these spaces - but it was totally worth it.  And thanks to the skill of our talented carpenters, the new kitchen is already taking shape.

Sure, we don't have walls, plumbing or electrical - but we had to order the kitchen cabinets to have them ready in time for our project.  So there has been lots of design work going on!  I did this mockup of the island and central light fixture. 

We don't want this to look like a modern kitchen.  We'd prefer it have an old world style that's appropriate for a 125 year old house (but of course we want modern conveniences!).  That led to many of our design decisions. 

First up was the cabinetry selection.  Old kitchens have what are known as inset cabinets.  These are typically custom made cabinets where the door is flush with the frame (as opposed to overlay cabinet doors, where the door sits in front of the frame).  

Crownpoint Cabinetry Factory - inset drawers in cabinet

But custom kitchen cabinets are very expensive and given all of our other budget overruns, that wasn't in our plans.  That's when I discovered Crown Select Cabinetry, which is a semi-custom cabinet that builds inset cabinets at a more affordable price.  We had the opportunity to visit their factory in Claremont, New Hampshire and really liked their manufacturing process and quality cabinetry.

We had a great factory tour!

I sent Bob Davis our initial design layout which included our desires for a farmhouse sink, center island, an antique hutch for a pantry and a banquette for dining.  Bob came out and measured and we started working on the detailed plan.  

Here are the 3D images Crownpoint's software generated from the plans.  The refrigerator and dishwasher will be hidden behind cabinet panels, to help disguise them a little.  The microwave is across from the sink, which will at least hide it a bit (because I really hate looking at a microwave!) 

My husband wanted a coffee bar - that includes a wine fridge, so I guess it's a multi purpose bar.  It's not an antique style element, so we hid it in a corner!  

We found this beautiful cabinet at Portland Architectural Salvage and will repurpose it into a pantry.  The combination of old/new is one of my favorite things about the kitchen. 

I want a vintage style tile for behind the stove and bar sink.  I love this handmade tile I found at Distinctive Tile & Design - but I'm still agonizing over the color.  (And notice the little peek of the fabric for window treatments!) 

Speaking of color, the cabinets will be 'Accessible Beige', by Sherwin Williams.  All of the trim on the first floor will be the same color.  I've done this in other houses and love the vintage look! 

So the contracts are signed and the cabinets are ordered.  Now we just need all the important behind the wall stuff - oh and some walls too!  

I loved the cathedral ceilings so much!!!

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