Beautiful Drafty Old Houses

  • Historic homes like James Boyd Brent's pictured above are beautiful, but not very energy efficient. (Photo by Diane Richard)

People who choose to live in historic houses tend to appreciate old-world
charm. But that charm often comes at the expense of energy efficiency.
Old windows and doors let in cold drafts and leak out warm air. So
homeowners are often forced to balance their interests in historical
integrity and aesthetics against their environmental principles:

Transcript

People who choose to live in historic houses tend to appreciate old-world
charm. But that charm often comes at the expense of energy efficiency.
Old windows and doors let in cold drafts and leak out warm air. So
homeowners are often forced to balance their interests in historical
integrity and aesthetics against their environmental principles:


My neighbor James Boyd Brent had me over to his house the other day.
He lives in a beautiful old farmhouse that’s about 130 years old. It’s got tall
ceilings. Rickety staircases. Original windows, floors and doors. But what
makes it cool also makes it cold. Really cold.


James recently had an energy audit done. Today he’s showing me all the
problems he needs to fix. He greets at the door me wearing a knit hat. And, even
though he’s lanky, he looks a bit padded.


“Well, I’ve got a vest, like a t-shirt, a shirt – a very thick shirt, actually –
then a sweater and another sweater. So that’s just four layers.”


That’s because it’s really cold inside. James is a Professor of Design at the University of Minnesota. He has a
taste for beautiful old things. But that puts him in a bind. Does he sacrifice
what he loves about his old home to improve his green cred? Or does he
simply live with the howling gales blowing down his hallways?


It’s a dilemma he confronts every winter. Preserving aesthetics versus
conserving energy. He says it’s not a strict either-or. And he’s willing to
install modern conveniences when it makes sense:


“I’m not interested in being faithful to some sort of bourgeois idea about what
history is.”


To prove it, he shows me the ultra-high-efficiency furnace and water
heater he recently installed in his basement. But I notice something else
down here:


Richard: “I see light coming through there.”


Brent: “Yeah. Exactly. That’s daylight. There’s not even a window. There’s
nothing. There’s just a hole.”


Upstairs, it’s bad enough. James’s house rarely tops 60 degrees. Down
here though, I can see my breath:


“Last year it froze down here. Rollicks’s cat water froze solid. I saw her
once sort of tapping it with her paw with a look of irritation.”


We leave the basement and its gaping hole for another day. Today’s chores start in the
kitchen:


“Okay, first of all, I’m working on this door here. Actually, as you can see, I’ve
sealed this all around in layers, actually. But I’ve just decided it’s not
enough. It’s still letting in great currents of cold air coming through. So I’m
going to actually seal the whole thing, right on the outside here. I’m just
sticking that down here a bit more strongly on the bottom. Because actually, that’s where
the cold air is coming through.”


The energy audit helped James figure out where he was losing the most
heat. Windows, doors, baseboards, walls and attic all were culprits:


“The basic thing is, that’s what came out of the energy audit. That all of
this sort of stuff that I’m doing now is basically, um, the sign of a complete
loser.”


Richard: “What do you mean?”


Brent: “Well, in the sense that it’s taking up all of my time and I might as well live
in a shack.”


James is not alone. Lots of people are in the same fix, loving their
beautiful home, hating that it’s as drafty as a barn.


I talked to Paul Morin about James’s frustration. Paul is a home energy
expert. He says the taping sheets of plastic over old doors and windows
should pay off:


“That really reduces the amount of air infiltration and also adds another
insulating layer. So that’s very effective.”


Paul says there’s lots more James can do, but taping up things is cheap and easy. Now, James is not looking forward to pulling down all the film next spring. But
he’s willing to keep doing it, because it’s the only way he can
balance his appreciation for the past and his commitment to the future:


“I mean, obviously I could heat this house just by cranking up the furnace and
not worrying. But it would cost literally thousands of dollars a quarter.
And also it’s just a complete waste of energy. I do have a sort of sense of
the connection between wasting money, and also wasting energy, wasting resources
and being wasteful.”


So, like a lot of people who love their old homes, James’ weekends will
be spent sealing up his house. It’s that or spend a lot of
money on expensive upgrades, or wasting money on heat that escapes
through the drafty windows and doors. And that big hole in the
basement.


For the Environment Report, I’m Diane Richard.

Related Links

Falcons Hatch a Complete Recovery

Thirty years ago, peregrine falcons were nearly extinct in the Midwest. Today, environmental protection efforts have succeeded in returning the fast-flying raptors to their earlier numbers… and even better. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Diane Richard has more:

Transcript

Thirty years ago, peregrine falcons were nearly extinct in the Midwest. Today, environmental protection efforts have succeeded in returning the fast-flying raptors to their earlier numbers… and even better. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Diane Richard has more:


A twenty-year program to restore peregrine falcons is seeing new signs of
success this summer: hatchlings.


Experts estimate that as many as 300 peregrine falcons will hatch this year.


In the sixties, DDT all but wiped out the population. But the peregrine
falcon is back, thanks to a ban on the pesticide and conservation efforts by the Midwest Peregrine Falcon Restoration Program.


Since the eighties, this regional partnership has released birds bred in captivity. Today, it’s monitoring peregrine falcons at 30 sites across 13 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces.


Mark Martell is a conservation coordinator with the restoration program. He
says the challenge now is to keep the population thriving.


“We don’t have a lot of experience with taking a species from zero
individuals up to a stable population. So we want to make sure this
population stays stable.”


To do so, Martell says researchers will spend the next 20 years keeping tabs
on the falcons and their chicks.


For Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Diane Richard.