Are you a millennial who bought an amazing property you found on Cheap Old Houses, and now you’re going through buyer’s remorse after your first summer of air conditioning bills? Maybe a baby boomer fantasizing about moving into one of those new condos downtown rather than endure another drafty winter in your old stone farmhouse? Or maybe you’ve made peace with the fact that the charm of an old home comes with certain tradeoffs: creaky floorboards, doors that stick, and being uncomfortable several months a year—or paying a fortune in utility bills to overcome that discomfort. After all, old homes can’t really be efficient and “green.” Right?
Well, that depends on where you start doing your accounting. In 2007, architect Carl Elefante wrote an article titled “The Greenest Building is… One that is Already Built.” That phrase has arguably become more influential than his actual article (though I encourage you to read it), and was adapted in the title of this 2016 report by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Trust’s study essentially found that if you factor in the environmental costs of sending demolished buildings to landfill and the energy inputs required to construct new buildings from new materials, it takes a loooooong time for a new, more “efficient” building to pay off its energy “debt.” Now, the National Trust for Historic Preservation is not exactly unbiased on this subject, but the claim makes good sense. On the other hand, somebody fired the bricks or felled the trees for your house a long time ago, and the longer you can keep those materials in use and out of the landfill, the better.
So let’s start with the premise that because your old home exists, it is almost certainly very wasteful to abandon it and start from scratch. I think it’s useful to contrast your house with your gasoline or hybrid car, which is something that you will almost certainly abandon and replace with an electric vehicle in your lifetime. And that’s probably the best way to do it with cars, because cars have shorter service lives than houses and because swapping out engines, engine-driven components, and drivetrains doesn’t sound feasible to me (though there are companies that will do it).
OK, but how does any of this help you with your heating bill? Fortunately, making your house more efficient—and more comfortable, and more affordable—doesn’t need to involve anything as invasive replacing the engine in your car. In fact, many of the most effective solutions are small, affordable projects you can take on yourself, no experience necessary.
That’s where Green Old Home comes in. If you can sift through all the hot garbage out there on the internet, there is a lot of good information about energy efficiency and weatherization. However, I’ve noticed that a lot of the information is:
- Scattered and hard to find
- Geared towards professionals (ever heard of hygrothermal analysis?)
- Tailored to new construction (I don’t care what the ideal wall assembly is—what about the walls I’ve got?)
- Biased by a company that sells a particular product or service (HVAC contractors, window manufacturers)
- Totally unprioritized (what’s most important? where should you start?)
- Presented as rote (OK, you’re telling me to do this, but why?)
My goal for this site is to fill this void and provide a trusted resource for homeowners, landlords, and anyone else with a love/hate relationship with an old building. Green Old Home will teach you in plain language the most important concepts you need to understand your home and why it (mis-)behaves the way it does. And when you understand your home better, you’ll be able to make the right choices about what projects to tackle first—because every old building is different. I’ll give you the information you need to do most of the work yourself (saving you even more money!), and won’t assume any prior knowledge or experience on your part. And if you decide that a particular project is beyond your limits, you’ll know enough to make smart decisions about contractors.
So why should you listen to me? Well, I’m lucky enough to work with old buildings every day for my job, and while my job isn’t to weatherize them, I’ve had the opportunity to learn the lingo and concepts that architects and engineers use to think about how buildings perform. And I’ve paid particular attention to the subject over the years because I also own a 135-year-old house, where I’m always putting theory to the test. But you don’t have to trust me. Unlike most of the internet, Green Old Home will provide thorough explanations and/or sources for its information whenever possible. If you see something that doesn’t make sense to you, please leave a comment or reach out through the contact page.
Ready to go? Let’s start talking about your old home.