Being Green
Is should come as no surprise that historic buildings are not very environmentally friendly, but demolishing old buildings in favor of building new "greener" buildings if often a false premise. Few activities have more negative environmental impacts than demolishing an old structure and replacing it with a new one, regardless of how green the new construction is.
Our lovely Capitol Hill buildings are all approaching (or well within) their second century of life, and we're working hard to bring them up to the modern era.
121 12th Street SE is our most ambitious project so far.
This 54 unit apartment building has been substantially upgraded to make it more comfortable and energy efficient, including:
-Fully restored original windows with new storm windows. These double hung windows were removed one at a time, stripped of all lead paint, re-glazed, and sealed with modern weather stripping. This, combined with storm windows, makes exceedingly tight, well constructed windows that should last another 100 years.
-Installation of a 24kW solar array. This is a massive solar array spread over two rooftops, more than sixty individual panels, and produces over 20 megawatts of power each year.
-Installation of new High Efficiency Condensing Boilers and Indirect Water Tanks in 2021
We tore out a dinosaur of a boiler and a gigantic hot water tank (that was constantly heating water regardless of demand) and replaced them with three NTI condensing boilers and two indirect tanks that produce hot water on demand.
The condensing boilers are both more efficient in their ability to heat the water that circulates through our heating system and they are "smarter" in every way. The old system, once turned on, pumped out 180 degree water constantly for the full heating season, often overheating the building on Fall days. These little boilers, can heat on a curve, putting out 140 degree water on warmer days and hotter water when the temps drop. They also adjust to demand by only running one or two boilers as needed, or ramping up to all three on those rare sub-zero days in DC.
The indirect water heaters produce hot water on demand, so gone are the days when we're constantly heating 200 gallons of water "on standby" in the middle of the day when nobody is taking showers. When tenants need hot water it is nearly instantly heated by the same boilers that heat the building. Because water is neither stored nor heated by a flame within these units, they should have twice the life of the previous hot water tank.
Greener Transportation for Maintenance Staff...
Our next project is figuring out how to cut down on the wasteful short car and truck trips that our staff run all day long. All of our buildings are located within a one mile radius, so we try to walk and bike as much as possible, but this is often impossible when hauling tools and construction materials.
We experimented with custom bike trailers fabricated by Tony Hoar (a cyclist in the 1950s Tour de France, look him up!). And we use one of these trailers for all of our gardening equipment (which is all electric). The trailers work great, but we discovered that STOPPING a bike with 400lbs of cargo behind you is the real challenge!
Recently, we have been testing out an electric utility moped designed by Cake, a Swedish motorcycle company. Fully equipped with baskets, we can haul about two hundred pounds of tools on just the two wheels, and paired with our trailers, the sky is the limit. We're run into some regulatory challenges with using electric mopeds, though, so we're moving on to look at electric bikes... possibly something like the three wheeled Rad Burro. We'll update the site in the spring when we're ready to embark on the next step of this journey.