Historic Buildings Exempt From Energy Conservation

This morning I was browsing Brownstoner and came across a post that mentioned that landmarked buildings are exempt from the NYS Energy Conservation Guidelines. I sent off a note to our architect and his expediter (who’s also an architect), and it seems the exemption is somewhat new. It’s somewhat ironic though, considering all the hassle DOB put our expediter though last year to show compliance with the 2007 energy code when it now appears we’re exempt.

Here’s the explanation of the exemptions:

Buildings & Spaces

  • National- and State-designated historic buildings, buildings certified as contributing buildings within National or State historic districts, and buildings certified as eligible for such designation are exempt from the NYCECC (ECC 101.4.2).

Systems

  • The building thermal envelope of low-energy buildings is exempt from the NYCECC (ECC 101.5.2).

Work Types

  • Life-safety work types: FA, FP, SD, SP (ECC 101.6).
  • Other work types not regulated by the ECC: FB, FS, EQ, CC, OT/BPP, OT/FPP, (ECC 101.3).

(Source)

Those codes will probably mean more to your architect than it does to you or me, but the big one is exemption from rules about the thermal envelope.

Of course, for practical reasons you want to be as energy efficient as possible, but this is the first case I’ve seen where landmarked buildings had less regulation than regular buildings – so it’s notable.

C of O issues @ DOB

Another post on Brownstoner is worth mentioning as well. DOB is requiring some poor homeowner to prove that their place is really 2 family when the DOB lists the building as 2 family and the DOF also lists it as 2 family. In other words, the DOB is not honoring their own building classification. The problem is larger buildings have I-Cards (the precursors to C of Os) which can prove prior approved usage, but with smaller buildings it’s extremely difficult to show when buildings were reclassified. In the case in question the building was converted from 1 family to 2 family in the 1930s.

Homeowner’s Night @ DOB

And lastly, I’ve been saying DOB really needs to help homeowners with their difficulties getting projects through the DOB bureaucracy. Well, it turns out DOB already does exactly that (who knew?) Tuesday night is Homeowner’s Night at DOB – from 4pm to 5:30. Just show up at your borough office and there will be someone to answer your questions. Though I did see someone recommend that you call first to confirm the meeting hasn’t been canceled.

Our Brita Water Filter Made Me Sick

Britta water jug

The culprit

UPDATE: I’ve totally given up on Brita. I had more “gastrointestinal problems” after writing the blog post. We’re now just buying huge jugs of water from the grocery store.

If you use a Brita water filter you need to be very careful with it. I pretty much lost a week of my life recently because there was stuff growing in it and I didn’t realize it.

I drink a lot of iced tea – probably a half gallon a day. Back in the day I was drinking Coke and Dan wanted to get me off that onto something that was more healthy, so we bought some tea bags and sugar and started making our own tea. Thing was the water in our building isn’t all that clean, so we bought the Brita filter/jug you see to the right.

Because it’s easier to make the tea and dissolve the sugar when the water is warm, we just kept the Brita jug on the counter. Sometimes I’d put it in the sun if I was about to make a batch of tea. BAD idea… I didn’t think about the fact that sun and warmth would let things grow.

About a week and a half ago I started getting sick. Stomach felt really bad, I was lethargic and there were bouts of diarrhea. I’m a bit prone to gastrointestinal stuff, so I just put up with it and thought it would go away in a day or two. Well, it didn’t go away. And when the diarrhea was worst I didn’t want to get dehydrated, so I’d drink more iced tea. What I didn’t know was that was making things worse.

Finally after 5 or 6 days I figured it out. I replaced the filter, cleaned the pitcher with hot water, and within 24 hours I was back to normal. Lesson learned.

I’m still using the Brita pitcher, but now it’s in the fridge. If you have a Britta or go to someone’s home who has one – make sure it’s kept in the refrigerator… Just changing the filters when they tell you to isn’t enough.

Floors in our unit start to take shape…

It’s sorta odd with our building – floors are getting built that we’ve never stood on before and we’re just now starting to really understand what our place will be like. The contractor now has 3 of the 5 floors completed and he’s racing to get up to the roof since water penetration is affecting some of the plywood subfloors he’s already put down.

That means in addition to the floor for the basement rental apartment, the parlor floor is in as is the one above that – where our home office will be. Here’s the parlor floor, first looking back. You can see the opening for the stairs. There will be a dining area just past that, and then the living room beyond that (see plans below).

Parlor floor looking towards the back

The rooms are a decent size, but not huge. We’ll have about the same amount of entertaining space as we did in our old apartment.

And here’s the parlor floor looking towards the front…

Parlor floor looking towards the front of the building

The area in front of the stairs will be the kitchen. Here are plans for the parlor floor so you can get an idea of how things will be laid out…

Plan view of parlor floor

(Click to see bigger version of plan.)

The next floor up is also in. That floor will have my/our home office in the front and a spare bedroom in the rear. Here’s a photo looking forward. The space just past the staircase will be the home office.

Future home office

And here’s a plan for that floor. In the back there will be a guest bedroom with a private(ish) bathroom and the laundry room… Since this version of the plans we’ve made the bedroom 6″ shorter and the bathroom 6″ longer in order to accommodate a proper soaking tub (an issue we were alerted to by Julia Angwin’s blog – we were planning on the same tub).

2nd floor plan with home office and laundry

I gotta say it’s sorta cool to see it all coming together. I can really start visualizing space I’ll be living in 8(?) months from now… For example, here’s what the view from my/our home office will be…

View of 157 West 123rd Street, Harlem View of 'The Shakespeare' and two other buildings on 123rd Street

The red building with the white arched windows (157 West 123rd Street – a formerly City owned building that’s gone coop, built in 1895) is what you see directly across the street when you go in the office door. But when I’m sitting at my desk I’ll see some other buildings – the red brick condo (155 West 123 St), “The Shakespeare” (the white rental building – 151 West 123rd St), and The Greater Metropolitan Baptist Church (147 West 123rd St. – originally built in 1897 as the German-American St. Paul Lutheran Church of Harlem – designed in the Gothic style by architects Ernest W. Schneider and Harry Herter).

Burned floor joists

Damage from kitchen fireWe’ve known there was a fire in the building at some point – we think it was in 1997 or 1998. We can now see where it started – there was apparently a kitchen on the floor above parlor. There was a cooking fire and it got into the ceiling and burned the floor joists. You can see what I’m talking about in the picture above and to the right. I’m pretty sure that was the end of it for our building. In the 12 years since then no one has lived in the building – until now 🙂

Gratuitous, Random Renovation Pics

Here are just a few cool pictures from the last week of renovation…

Rotten original details in Harlem townhouse shell

This is about as much “original details” as we have on the interior of our house. That’s one of the only remaining window frames – it’s in what will be the spare bedroom – 2nd floor of our unit, back of the house. Needless to say, we’re doing a rehab, not a restoration… Going forward the look will be contemporary.

Old fireplace in building that's under construction

The fireplace in the same bedroom as the window shown in the first picture. A random hard hat adorns the wall…

New metal floor joists and rotting old wooden joists

Here you can see the contrast between the new metal joists and the rotting wooden ones they’re replacing. Focus is a bit off – sorry…

Under the stoop in a townhouse under renovation

And here we have the space under the stoop showing the layers of decay and renewal…

The Return of The Happy Game Room

The “store front” came off our building yesterday and we were pleased/amused to see the painted sign for The Happy Game Room that was visible in the 1980 tax photo. Our place has a commercial overlay, so it’s legal to run businesses out of the bottom two floors. Around 1980 the business that was in there was The Happy Game Room. At that time the neighborhood was going downhill quickly, but our building had an owner who seemed to care about the building. I’m not sure what all went on in The Happy Game Room, but it’s sorta fun that the sign is still there…

The remnants of The Happy Game Room sign

And no, we’re not restoring/keeping the sign. We don’t want to have people knocking on our tenants’ door wanting to play cards – lol.

More than anything else, I’m just happy the store front is gone and it’s starting to look like a normal brownstone again. We’re going to have french doors in the opening you see in the picture above, not a window like most brownstones. There are two entrances under the stoop, and the 2 foot wide entrance under the stoop into the rental apartment isn’t up to code (which requires 3 feet of width). BUT the good part is we can get to the cellar without having to go through the rental apartment.

Two entrances under brownstone stoop Two entrances under a brownstone stoop in Harlem

In the photos above you can see how there’s a narrow walkway around the column into the apartment, and then wider stairs down into the cellar. That’s unusual for Harlem brownstones – usually there’s just the entrance into the apartment.

The blocked up opening you see above right will be reopened and a proper grille put in – more or less as it was originally.