Marcus’ name likely sounds familiar to you. After all, he’s on our Green Home Experts Board and a frequent contributor to the publication. It may also sound familiar from a previous remodel featured as a Showcase in these pages at the beginning of the year. But don’t stop reading just because you read January’s. This remodel of Marcus’ is different in a couple of ways: the home is his personal project, and it has taught him more than previous projects about just what it takes to renovate an existing structure.

He chose to remodel the house at 53 Wellington Street in West Asheville as opposed to building a new home as an affordable and eco-friendly option, and also because he could take on most of the work himself. His ability to be hands-on with the project and his knowledge of and connections within the industry has helped a great deal so far toward his greening goal.

Marcus has been able to salvage many materials—like insulation, exterior trim, urbanite and lumber—from existing structures, other job sites and friends that will all find a new home in this project. Marcus was able to salvage enough urbanite from a friend’s driveway and another location, for example, to create stairs and terrace the sloped back yard, leaving it a more usable space for the home’s future renters and keeping the waste concrete from going to the landfill. Brick from one of the home’s two chimneys (he kept one for aesthetic reasons) and brick from the chimney of his last remodel will be used to create a back patio in front of the terrace work, and additional concrete from other sites will be crushed and used as aggregate underneath the brick so that no virgin materials will need to be used for the patio. As a historical touch, some of the brick he acquired still has the stamp of the old Buncombe Brick Company, and those pieces will be featured in prominent locations in the patio. Many of the replacement windows in the home were also given to Marcus by those in the industry. He bought the rest at salvage yards for $70 each, but all are Energy Star rated. He was also able to salvage old doors, keeping within the character of the home, that will add the finishing touch when the project nears completion.

To date, approximately 45 percent of the home has been rebuilt, including half of the existing foundation. Because the home needed more than just new finishes and eco-friendly touches, Marcus’ primary focus up to this point has been the reuse of existing materials and creating a tight building envelope. He’s taken care to air seal the building envelope at both the exterior sheathing and at the drywall using an airtight drywall approach, and he installed a radiant barrier in the attic that will reflect 90 plus percent of the sun’s radiant energy out from the roof. Reclaimed insulation from an old church will go into the walls and the vented portion of the attic, and ridged insulation will be used in two ceilings where the roof was vaulted. Where new exterior walls were required, Marcus used advanced framing methods. The methods reduced the amount of wood needed, and he sheathed the walls with ridged insulation to provide a thermal break and increase the overall insulation level of the home.

The blows to his budget from existing structural problems will prevent Marcus from working with renewable technologies like photovoltaics and solar water as he originally planned. However, they were considered in the overall planning, and wire chases and plumbing lines were installed for future PV and solar hot water, respectively, so they can be incorporated at a later date. Marcus has also learned that in addition to needing to be flexible with your budget when taking on a remodel, safety is a serious concern with any older home. “If it was built before the mid-1970s, it most likely contains lead paint, and working with dry lead paint creates dust that can be brought into your home and your family,” he says. Marcus also reminds us that asbestos can be a hazard, and it can be found in everything from siding to some floorings or vermiculite insulation. He also cautions, “If the home ever burned coal, the soot in the chimney, attic and walls could contain mercury and other heavy metals associated with the burning of coal. And, older homes have had decades of humans living there, in a time when we had household chemicals that contained toxins that are now banned. Toxins may have been used in, on or under the home in the form of pesticides, paint removers, plumbing drain fluids and many other possibilities. You must be aware of what you may be dealing with or you could risk respiratory and neurological damage for yourself or your family.”

As of the writing of this article, the project is still awaiting drywall and paint, but so far, despite the structural damage that needed to be corrected, Marcus has been able to take a two bedroom/one bathroom to a three bedroom/two bath and work toward creating an eco example. And he now has some advice for readers who may be embarking on a remodel: Spend time at the house. “The more time you are there, the more you will see,” he says. “Get friends from the construction industry to come have a look. Get subcontractors to come and give quotes to do certain things that need repair. Make a budget with this information. Generally, replacing the interior finish is easy and inexpensive. If there is foundation work, damage to the wood structure or roof leaks that have existed for a long time, the cost increases rapidly. It will always cost you more than you think, but remodeling a home provides a great opportunity to bring a little history up to energy efficient standards that will save you money for the long term.”

Specifications

Location
53 Wellington Street
in West Asheville

Renovator
Marcus Renner of Appropriate Building Solutions

Size
1,060 square feet

Price Tag
Purchased for under $100,000

Completed
In process

Top Green Points 

Environmental
Existing home renovation in urban location
Reclaimed materials used, including insulation, urbanite, brick and woods
Original wood floors saved

Low-toxicity
Low- to zero-VOC products, including engineered woods, glues and paints

Efficiency
Energy Star windows
Reflective roof barrier to keep heat out
Air sealing of existing building envelope
Ridged insulation sheathing in new construction
14-SEER heat pump designed using Manual
J HVAC sizing
Sealed duct work and crawlspace
Low-flow fixtures

New Life Journal’s Green Home Experts Say…

Jody Guokas of JAG Construction: I think my favorite element of this project was the use of old concrete for retaining in the backyard. Old concrete is a material that is hard to know what to do with and expensive to dispose of. In a sense though, broken concrete is just like rock, with a different aesthetic.
As far as the question of remodeling versus new construction, I think in a long-term view, a remodel will always win the battle of consuming less energy.

There is huge amount of embodied energy in the house that Marcus has worked on, and now that energy has the chance to stay in a productive housing form for many more years. This project highlights what to me is a major consideration in a remodel, which is increasing the efficiency of the old home. By tearing the house back to the studs, Marcus was able to improve the thermal envelop of the house with insulated sheathing and air sealing.
 
Dave Hollister of Sundance Power Systems: Marcus did a nice job of using recycled and salvaged products and made some good choices in eliminating some areas that were beyond repair. The radiant barrier approach is also a great part of this remodel. It’s an inexpensive way to limit heat gain in the summertime and heat loss in the winter, depending upon how it is installed. This is a technology that is so inexpensive, easy to install and works incredibly well, yet it’s so often overlooked as a high performance building product.

janeAnne Narrin of Eco-Steward Realty: Because I always look at the “environment” surrounding a property, I was impressed with the location of this very challenging remodel. It’s in West Asheville where many new green-builts and remodels are popping up, and it’s within walking distance of an elementary school and very, very nice park! If I were to advise others or myself regarding undertaking a remodeling project, those two factors alone could be of significance.

David Tuch of Equinox Environmental: Green design has to not only provide an environmental function, but it also needs to have a form that is beautiful. As someone who focuses on sustainable site planning and landscape design, I look at the quality and character of the design form as being just as important as the function of the design. A retaining wall made out of recycled concrete, as was done for the rear yard of this remodel, is an excellent idea and can look great if constructed properly. For the green movement to become truly mainstream, it needs high quality workmanship associated with construction practices that focus on the details to create beautiful spaces that inspire. After all, beautiful landscapes and beautiful architecture are sustainable when they are valued and deemed worthy of being saved from the bulldozer.

Victoria Schomer of Green Built Environments: Marcus’ layout for the interior space increased the home to three bedrooms/two baths. It’s quite tight in some of those bedrooms, but the spaces he created, especially in the kitchen area, feel very open and filled with light. And the addition of outside living space will add more usable areas and support sustainable living.

One Step Further

Many on the Board would have liked to see this project incorporate passive and active solar approaches. “If he had a larger budget, he could have increased the ‘greenness’ of the building by making it passive solar and also incorporating active solar elements, the latter of which include solar hot water and solar PV,” says Michael Figura. Clarke Snell of Think Green Building adds, “Increasing glazing on the south side and installing overhangs would have been a relatively easy way to decrease the home’s heating needs in the winter months. Being that the project was already taken back to the studs and the orientation was correct, the expense for this would have just been the windows.”

Dave Hollister agrees, too, citing the importance of having city and county support and invectives to encourage landlords to take on the costs of adding renewable energy to rental properties. He also notes that more attention could have been paid to high-performance insulation with this home.

Thinking about the project’s green features left David Tuch with some fundamental questions about green renovation and what needs to be done in order to create a great green building. “ ‘Is it enough to have an energy efficient building envelope and call it good?’ This is one of the questions I tried to work through on our recent tour. I feel that green projects need to hit the triple bottom line of environment, economics and social aspects. On small-scale remodel projects, it’s tough to be able to do it all. A new house on this same location with more green features could have offset the environmental costs of bringing demolished materials to the dump by reducing resource and energy consumption. The good news is that the 1,000 square foot house wasn’t replaced by a house triple its size, and it should be in the more affordable price range.”

Remodel? Build New?
If you’re asking yourself these questions, keep reading for our experts musings and tips about the often hard-to-answer dilemma.

Michael Figura: When deciding whether or not to tear down a home or remodel it, you should consult an expert to make sure that you know what you are getting into with a remodel. Remodeling a home is very tricky, and there are almost always problems that you can’t see until you get into the project. If you’re remodeling a home to rent it out and are wondering how to recapture your investment on energy efficient remodeling expenditures, keep in mind that energy efficient homes generally rent much more quickly and rent for more money when compared to a non-energy efficient home.

Dave Hollister: In general, rehabs are the greenest home you can build. There needs to be more emphasis on just how energy and resource efficient rehabbing can be. For a great reference on the value of transforming the existing building stock as a way to solve the problem of global warming, visit www.architecture2030.org.

Clarke Snell: As Marcus himself elegantly put it, this sort of project sits between a rock and a hard place. There are too many unknowns and “head-scratchers” in renovations of this kind to allow a professional company to take them on without fear. If they did, they would almost certainly cut corners because it isn’t their house and they are thinking about making a profit. On the other hand, if you’re considering taking on the project as an owner-builder, while there’s the motivation to go beyond a strict short-term monetary gain equation, there may not be the know-how to pull off the project. That leaves an experienced professional taking it on as a personal project to live in themselves as the one obvious avenue to create a truly quality “green” product within the context of our economy. My feeling is that if there isn’t focused, passionate follow-through, then we can’t do great things in the context of this economy.

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