Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

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In order to avoid exparte communications, DDRC members are under strict instructions not to discuss cases under consideration with the public or with each other outside of the public forum. The meeting typically starts with staff calling the case, giving a summary of the project, and then calling on the applicant to present if they wish. All right. Decisions are typically made in one evening and decisions may be appealed within 30 days to a court of competent jurisdiction. Oaths will be administered individually as we hear either from applicants or from live speakers. Thank you. Applicants with requests before the DDRC are allotted a presentation time of 10 minutes. This time should include, but is not limited to an overview of the project, case history, and any pertinent meetings held regarding the request. This time also includes all persons presenting information on behalf of the applicant, such as attorneys, engineers, and architects. This time limit does not include any questions asked by DDRC or staff regarding requests. Members of the general public are given the opportunity to address their concerns in intervals of two minutes. Applicants may have five minutes to respond. Staff is a timer and will make presenters aware of when their of when their time has expired. Are there any changes to the agenda?

Yes, there are a few changes to the agenda. Uh on the regular agenda under historic 1125 Hey Haygood Avenue which was a request for certificate of design approval for an addition and carport in the Melrose Heights Oaklan Architectural Conservation District has been deferred. Number two on the regular agenda 805 W Street an appeal of staff decision regarding window replacement in the way street protection area has been withdrawn. And number three, uh, 8:30 Maple Street, which is a request for certificate of design approval for construction of an out building in Old Shandon, lower Waverly Protection Area A, has been deferred. Thank you. The DDRC uses the consent agenda to approve non-controversial or routine matters by a single motion and vote. If a member of the DDRC or the general public wants to discuss an item on the consent agenda, that item is removed from the consent agenda and considered during the meeting. The DDRC then approves the remaining consent agenda items. Will staff please read the consent agenda?

Uh yes, we have 924, 926, 928, 930, 934 Harden Street, 905 Walnut Street, which is TMS number 11405-07-17. is request for certificate of design approval for construction of a mixeduse development in the upper five points design overlay district. And we have 1108 Queen Street 1149-08-07 which is a request for a certificate of design approval for construction of a single family home in the old Shanden lower Waverly protection area A. And just as a note on 1108 Queen Street, in the staff recommendations and the evaluation, there was a typo that listed the wrong address. So the staff recommendations in the agenda that you were given are for 1108 Queen Street.

Is there anyone from DDRC that would like any item removed from the consent agenda? Is there anyone from the public who would like to have an an item removed from the consent agenda? All right, I'll open the floor for a motion um to approve the consent agenda and the minutes from the September meeting. I move to accept the consent agenda with the updated changes and the minutes from um September. Thank you. Uh there's been a motion. Is there a second? Second. All right. Will staff, please call the vote. Miss Gallow? Yes.

Mr. Lee Decker? Yes. Mr. McKenzie? Yes. Mr. Celibbe? Yes. Mr. Shelton? Yes. Miss Thomas? Yes. Thank you very much. Um, so there are no items on the regular agenda this evening. So I will open it up if anyone has other business to discuss. Staff will be giving a presentation on energy efficiency and historic houses. Um, so Betsy, you can take that over. Very nice. Thank you.

Yes. Uh, so we wanted to talk about this because it is something that we get a lot of questions about. there is the idea or the misconception that historic buildings are always going to be inherently uh inefficient and not comfortable. Uh so we wanted to take a few minutes to just talk about how these buildings work and what can be done to maintain the historic integrity of a building but also improve its integrity. And one of the things that we see a lot are requests for window changes. And that's something that we'll talk about in here that that is not usually the root of the issues that people are having with energy efficiency even though people generally think that it is. Uh I can say that I think for the two of us have probably had two or three site visits this week about window replacement requests and it is something that comes up very very often. So we always are trying to educate people about these topics. And just as a little background, uh, I worked on energy efficiency in historic buildings for about two years in a grant-f funded research project in Charleston. And we tested the energy efficiency. Let the siren pass. Uh, tested the energy efficiency of about 120 buildings that were both historic and more contemporary built to try to get an understanding of how these buildings function. And out of all of those that we tested, there was about a six to eight% difference in historic buildings versus contemporary buildings. So only about six to eight% less efficient for historic buildings than modern buildings. So it's again not quite as big a difference as one might think. And there are a lot of ways that we can make this better for these houses. So the first thing is the building envelope. you're going to have to understand where the building envelope is and where you're trying to keep conditioned air inside the house and where the unconditioned air can be. Uh so this diagram is great because on the

my left side of the building you see that the seal or the en the envelope is going to be more on the left side is going to be on the uh underside of the roof. So, for a lot of historic buildings, when people are looking to get more square footage, they might take an attic space and convert that into living space. And in that case, you're going to have your thermal barrier or your envelope on the underside of the roof. Uh then on the other side of the house, you have more of the traditional attic setup where it's going to be on the floor of the attic. Uh so, both of those places are acceptable. You're just going to use that to determine where your insulation and your air sealing is going to be. So the understanding the building envelope is really the first step to seeing how a building is working. Then we have air leakage. So you're really looking at these ways that air is going to move through the house because the more air that's moving through, the more air that's leaking, uh that's going to cause your HVAC system to work harder, cost you more money, and be less comfortable for those inside the house. Uh so if you think of the stack effect, the idea that hot air always rises, uh that's what's happening inside a house. So the cooler air is coming in towards the bottom and then it's rising up through the house and escaping through the top part. Uh so this is coming in from a variety of sources in a household. It's not just coming in from windows. And again, with air moving up, it's not coming in from the sides as much as you might think. That's where the windows are. Uh but really when you look at this things like drier vents, electrical outlets, uh recessed lighting, if anybody has recessed lighting in their house, make sure to take a look at that. And you'll often see cobwebs around the lighting, and that's a sign that there is air flow moving through that uh can light and going right up into the attic space of the house. So these types of penetrations in the building envelope are where a lot of this air leakage is happening. And it's again really going

to be the top and the bottom of a house that are the places you're going to target. And to see where the air infiltration is coming from, the majority of it is coming from the floors, the walls, and the ceilings. You see that there's about 12% that is lost through windows. So there is air leakage there, and there are things that you can do to fix that, but it is not the predominant place that you're losing your energy efficiency. It's also not going to be a very good economic return on your investment if you are going to spend a a significant amount of money to replace windows and only be targeting 12% of your energy loss. So, doing things to address the energy loss in floors, walls, and ceilings is going to be less um expensive and is going to get you a bigger return on investment. So, here are some examples of where these holes can be in a house. Uh here we have a a stack of penetration coming through an attic space. So you see that a lot of times these contractors are just going to kind of cut a big hole and run it through and they're not going to go back in and cap that or seal it. So you have basically just a big hole in your attic and that's where a lot of the conditioned air from inside your house, especially in the summer, is going to be rising up and into that attic and it's basically just escaping right outside of your house. There's also very little insulation in this picture. Uh we'll talk about that throughout the presentation, but generally if you go up in your attic and you can see the joists, you do not have enough insulation in your house. Uh you should have enough that they are well covered and that they are not visible. And so that's something that many of our houses probably, and I will admit my attic, I can see my joists. I need to get on top of that. Uh but that's something that you'll see in a lot of these a lot of houses. Another example, if you know they're running a new plumbing line or a new electrical line, they're not going to cap the old one. They'll just run a new one next to it. So these types of things are things that we see a lot of times,

especially in a house that's hundred and something years old where multiple people have been in there, have worked on it over the years, conditions have changed, and some of these holes are still there. There are also classic spaces that happen for both new buildings and historic buildings. when you have a change in levels of the house uh between that top wall. So the condition space might be from the wall on the right side and then you have a place where it's raised up and then it goes over to another height on the left. That space in between those two sections might not be capped, sealed or insulated. So you're going to have basically a flu inside the wall for the air flow. There's an example of that here. a wall cavity that is just open to the lower section and air is just traveling right through. Here you go. We saw a good example of this. Uh this is not the actual house we were in, but for one of our uh was it preservation month activities, we did a blower door assessment at a private house over in Earlwood. And a blower door is a test that uh definitely basically pressurizes or depressurizes the house. And so you can tell uh with a big fan in the doorway, it's pulling the air out of the house. And when the air is coming out, other air has to come in and replace that. Uh so we did this test and everybody was walking around the house feeling around the windows. There was very little air coming in around windows. We reached down and felt the plumbing penetration under the sink. You could feel air flow coming right through there. But the place that everybody could really feel it was behind a built-in cabinet like this. And it's because the cabinet is going to be open behind the wall. Sort of like what we saw here. That uh raised part on the left might be the cabinet and then behind it is going to be this open cavity. Uh and in that case, the section underneath the cabinet was open to the crawl space. So air from the crawl space was really just coming up behind the

cabinet and coming right through the doors and the back wall there. So it's not the windows. Especially in that case, it was great to see that there was very little to no air flow we could feel through windows. Uh it was coming through plumbing penetrations, electrical penetrations and where you have these changes in wall structure. So, some of the things that can be done about this, and there's a lot more we could talk about, but just for the sake of time, uh, we want to look at historic buildings and how they were built for the environment and how so many features on these buildings were meant to keep the buildings cool, especially in a cooling dominant climate like what we have. Uh so window coverings and awnings, these were found in a majority of buildings in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in a busy main street shopping area. And having something like that that would reduce the amount of direct light that's coming into a building, direct sunlight is going to have a significant reduce reduction in heat that's coming inside a house. So it can reduce that heat gain by 60 to 70%. And if you are then going to be using LED lights inside the house, that is also going to reduce the amount of heat that's coming inside. Window coverings again in residential structures. We still do see some of these historic awnings, especially if they're metal awnings. Uh we'll still see those around and still see some houses that were built with frameworks to have a a fabric or cloth awning. And having that kind of shade on the windows does make a big difference. Uh something that we have to talk to people about all the time is that these things are not just decorative. Historic houses are not just here because they're pretty. Uh they're here because they were built well. They were built for the environment, built for their conditions, and they've been able to withstand the test of time because of these features. So, historic shutters. Uh this is the historic Charleston Foundation building in Charleston. And I feature this one

even though it's not in Colombia because they did a test on their headquarters building where they closed the shutters on the south and west sides of the building in July and August and they saw um an 8 to 10% reduction in their energy usage. So something just as simple as closing shutters can really make a a big difference in in the comfort and in the cost of maintaining your house. And that's exactly you again why these features are here. uh they were built for the house and they're meant to function and that's why they were there. So for making your houses more comfortable today, there are other things we can do. Again, windows do need to be maintained. Historic wood windows are wonderful because you can just fix one small part of a window. If something happens, if a pane breaks, if a a rail breaks, you just take that out, replace it, put it back in. If you had a modern vinyl window and something breaks, you have to replace the entire thing. Uh so these are meant to be fixed, meant to be repaired and they are meant to be well sealed and functioning. So sometimes that means uh removing layers of paint that are preventing a window from closing properly. Sometimes it may just be realigning the windows in their sills so that they sit correctly or it might just be adding a little bit of caul or air sealing measures. So interior storm windows are something that we've seen a lot of success with. Uh they can be manufactured to fit directly into the window customs sized and then that way you have easy access to the windows to take those off to clean the window to open it in the when weather's nice and you can use those and be pretty functional. Exterior storm windows are what we see more often and there are a variety of different materials that can be used for these. I I know that they can be frustrating to some homeowners if you can't always take them off as easily, but it is something that's going to really make a big difference in air sealing and having that extra layer of insulation there. And it's also going to

allow for the original uh windows to to be seen and to not um disturb the original features of the house. Additional measures include uh other ways of air sealing. So, some of those big holes that you have in your house include attics and chimneys. So, a chimney, you know, you may have a flu in your chimney that you can close and that's a great help. But there are also chimney balloons and I checked and these are pretty readily available on Amazon or through Home Depot and they're pretty in inexpensive. Uh, so you can put one in your chimney, you inflate it, and it fills that gap inside your chimney. Uh, it also has a very significant thing that hangs down. So you can see it. So you're going to pull that out before you start a fire in there in the winter time. But it really does cap a lot of that air flow and really stops that unwanted flow from going out of your chimney. And then the lower picture is an attic catch cover. So your attic is basically a giant hole that goes up into your attic space. Uh so you're not going to be able to put blownin or um insul other types of insulation on top of that. So, you can make sort of an insulated box that goes on top and that can be easily removed every time you're coming in and out. It's very lightweight, but it is made with an insulated foam board. Uh there are also ones that are sold that are a pre-made set that is basically just an insulated uh fabric that has a zipper, so you can zip it and unzip it when you're coming in and out. And having something like that over that big hole in the attic is going to make a big difference, too, to make sure you're not having air leakage coming out of that space. As we mentioned, weather stripping, um, outlet insulation. So, electrical outlets, it sounds crazy, but if you have all electrical outlets around the perimeter of your wall, if they're not well sealed, that's like having a bunch tons of little holes around the perimeter of your house. So, there are

insulation outlet covers that you can get. Again, very unaffordable and you or very affordable and inexpensive. And uh you can get a pack of them I think for $5 has you know 10 or 20 of them. And so they're for light switches and for electrical outlets and you can just put one of those behind the casing and then you can have that insulation there that'll help to cut off that air flow. Uh we do support terms of co caulk around windows around these different penetrations and there are different types of weather stripping materials too. They are all very easy things to apply to a house. And with all of these combined, you can really cut down a significant amount of air infiltration into a house. So, some other quick tips. Uh, change your air filters monthly. I know that doesn't seem like something that, you know, something that's easy to brush off, but it really does make a big difference because the cleaner that filter is, the less work your HVAC system has to do. So, if it's working to pull air through a dirty filter, it's going to have to work harder and cost your system more money, more electricity. So, do make sure to change those. Uh, get your H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H HBAC system serviced once or twice a year like they recommend. Um get a programmable thermostat and actually program it. Uh for every degree that you change, it is a 4 to 6% difference in energy cost. So, the recommended cost recommended setting for an air conditioning system is 78° in the summertime and 68° in the winter for heating. So, I know that that's not always what we set or what we um what we do, but those are the optimal temperatures for an HVAC system. So, every degree that you're going off of that is going to change your energy usage four to 6%. In the winter you want air to go up or down,

right? Uh in the winter you want to pull the heat up so that it let me see. I think in the winter you want it to go down and then in the summer you want it to come up. Uh because you're trying to push the air flow. um clockwise.

Yes, I've seen a lot of the new fans will have a button that just says winter or summer and so that makes it a lot easier. But yes, you should change those too uh to make sure that those are pushing the error in the right direction that you want it to go. And I'll say electric companies, uh, when I did this grant-f funded program 13 years ago, uh, it was at that point in time, and they were really working to cut down on energy usage, which seemed crazy to me that they would want to cut down on how much usage there is. But maintaining residential energy usage at a reasonable level was much more affordable for them than building new power plants. And if we've seen some of the things that have happened with power plants in the state in the past couple years, uh it is not an easy process to build and maintain those. So trying to get people to use energy in a reasonable amount is something that electric companies generally want to help you with. So I know that Dominion now will come out to your house and do uh I think it's generally a basic walkthrough that they'll do to help you pinpoint places that could be liable for energy waste. And then they also have a lot of rebates and other incentives for um LED light bulbs for energy efficient appliances, water heaters, HVAC systems and other appliances like that. Uh so there there are things out there that can help you with that cost and help it to be um to be manageable. So, these are just great things that can be done to a historic house, to a modern house, and these are things that we tell people about all the time to make sure that they are comfortable and maintaining their historic buildings and, you know, wanting to live there because if nobody wants to live in these buildings, if nobody's going to take care of them, then it's going to be damaging for the entire structure and the community too. So, we are always out there trying to help people with these um elements.

That's it. Right. Well, thank you so much for that presentation. I know um it'll certainly come in handy around my house and these are thoughts I have every month when I look at my utility bill. So, um really put them to good use. I was going to ask, are you planning on publishing this on y'all's website so the community can benefit from this? Well, the this will be on the YouTube page for the DDRC meetings. So, we have that and then we we had we've had energy efficiency newsletters in the past. Betsy did not do those. So maybe we do need an update on that. Um, but we do have some energy efficiency information on the website. Um, but yeah, we can always add more.

Yeah, and the National Park Service has their preservation bulletins and they do have a bulletin on energy efficiency that was updated actually when I was doing that grant funded project. Uh, so they made sure to get updated information in there. And one thing that was interesting is that a lot of the research in this was typically done in heating dominant climates, which are cold weather climates. and there really hadn't been a lot of attention paid to southern climates. Uh so in the last 10 or 15 years that has stepped up a bit and that is something that's more understood. So that's reflected in that national uh park service preservation brief.

Great. Well, thank you very much. Um any other DDC DDRC members have anything to add? If not, then uh I'll entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting.

Motion to adjurnn. Great. All right. Thank you everybody. treated as [Music] [Music]