By Marsh Davis, President
Exerpted from Indiana Preservationist, July/August 2008
In the zeal to “go green,” new construction that uses sexy, high-tech ways to reduce energy consumption gets the most attention in the popular and architectural press, but historic preservation has been green all along. Because we can’t build our way out of the energy crisis, the most environmentally responsible approach is to conserve rather than waste what’s already built.
Restoring historic structures and revitalizing older neighborhoods reduces waste and limits the demand for new infrastructure and new materials. In renovating a historic structure, you preserve a limited resource and conserve embodied energy—the energy already spent to quarry the limestone, make the bricks, mill the lumber. And historic buildings are invariably made of organic products, either renewable or long-lasting ones that are low on the energy-consuming scale—wood, brick, limestone, slate, plaster—rather than aluminum, vinyl, and plastic.
Unlike much of contemporary construction—franchise buildings and big box stores replaced with startling frequency—our forebears made places to last. And they built with efficiency and sustainability in mind, before they were buzz words. Old buildings have high ceilings, transoms and operable windows for cross-ventilation and “daylighting” (the new term for using natural light from windows and skylights to reduce electricity demand). Pre-World War II buildings used porches, canvas awnings and shutters, operable ones, not for decoration but to screen a room during the heat of the day. Many have (or had) wood storm windows and screens that with proper maintenance would outlast a human lifetime.
But aren’t old buildings energy hogs? Some are, but so are many newer buildings. Can historic buildings be made more energy efficient? Of course they can. Attic, crawlspace and basement insulation make a big difference in energy consumption and can easily be added. A yearly check of caulking around windows, doors and the sill of a building is essential. (Most heat loss in a building is through the roof and the sill, not the windows or the walls.) Storm windows, interior or exterior, also make a difference.
I plead for retaining original windows—an essential feature of historic buildings. Heavy advertising convinces owners they need vinyl replacement windows, but these often do not duplicate the size and shape of the original opening, and they’re not paned in the same pattern or dimension. In less than a generation, the replacement windows will need to be replaced, choking landfills with non-biodegradable material, whereas old windows can be repaired and weather-stripped, reglazed or retrofitted with insulated glass to maintain the original appearance of the building.
The U.S. Green Building Council deserves great credit for developing the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) process, which awards platinum, gold, silver, and certified status to environmentally sensitive structures. LEED gets lots of press and attention in the architectural profession, but the rating system is geared for consumption: it gives points for recycling in a new construction project but no points for keeping an entire historic building. It assigns no negative points for the loss of embodied energy, consuming energy in demolition, sending tons to the landfill, or building on former agricultural land. LEED could be greener if the point system more fairly and fully credited the benefits of historic preservation
In our 21st-century zeal to be green, we should remember the age-old adage, “waste not, want not.” Preserving old buildings is all about not wasting: not wasting embodied energy and human labor, not wasting irreplaceable architecture, not wasting culture, and not wasting evidence of history and the lives of those who preceded us on this earth.
(To read the full article, request a copy of the July/August 2008 issue of Indiana Preservationist. Contact Paige Wassel, 800-450-4534 or 317-639-4534, pwassel@historiclandmarks.org.)