Energy Efficient Window Choices – NYC

Posted on April 21, 2010 by BeatingUpwind

Choosing the right windows for our townhouse is a lot more complicated than you’d think. The best website for guidance is EfficientWindows.org which has a page dedicated to what the effect of different choices will be on your heating and cooling bills. Here’s a screenshot showing what the top choices are (click on the image to see more).

First, a few explanations of what some of those values mean…

“U” is “U-Factor” which measures the insulating value of the window. The lower the better.
“SHGC” is the Solar Heat Gain Coefficient which measures how much solar rays can heat the building. It’s a proportion, so an SHGC of 0.26 means that 26% of the sun’s heat gets through the window and 74% is blocked.
“VT” is the visible light that’s transmitted. It’s also a proportion, so a VT of 0.50 means 50% of the visible light is transmitted through the window. The higher this value, the brighter your room will be.

The problem is that they assume that you’re installing the same types of windows in all the windows in your house and that you heat and cool your house evenly. Neither of those assumptions are true for us.

In our case the windows in the back are facing south and will get an incredible amount of light. The windows in the front will only get direct sun for maybe an hour early each morning, and the windows on the side will get no sun at all. Simply put you want different windows where there’s lots of direct light than you do where there’s virtually no direct light, so those recommendations only take you so far…

The other issue is balancing the windows effect on heating and cooling. The U-value is going to determine how much the outside temperature affects the inside temperature. You want well insulated windows so on cold or hot days the temperature inside the building isn’t affected. This means you want as low of a U-factor as possible. However, with solar heat gain it gets a lot more complicated. The more solar heat gain you have, the lower your heating bills will be, but the higher your cooling bills will be.

If you’ve heard of “passive houses” the idea is that they want solar heat gain in the winter and try to avoid it in the summer. They’ll have concrete floors on the south to absorb and store solar heat in the winter, but then they’ll have overhangs that block solar heat gain as the sun climbs in the summer. Passive houses are all about being intelligent about solar heat gain.

We really don’t care about LEED certification in the least, but we do care about how much it costs to run our house. We’re going with more expensive closed cell foam insulation in the walls, and (as you can see) I’m giving a lot of thought to our window choice in an attempt to reduce the heating and cooling bills. We’re more than happy to put extra money towards stuff that will save us money down the road. So here’s my thinking…

Windows that get almost no direct light…

U-factor is important
SHGC is irrelevant (no direct sun means virtually no solar heat gain)
Visible light transmission should be as high as possible

Windows that get lots of light…

U-factor is important
SHGC “depends”
Visible light transmission “depends”

I don’t like to be in overly sunny rooms. I often cross the street to get out of the sun and I hate sunny places like Arizona and Southern California. So I don’t want a whole lot of visible light transmission on the southern windows. Your taste may differ – many people like direct sun – I’m just not one of them.

The SHGC you want depends on how you have your house arranged. In reading Julia Angwin’s blog on the Wall Street Journal I see she’s taking a very different tack than we are. She specifically said “We chose the south side for our office so we could have good light during the day.” (source) She and her husband are clearly people who like direct sunlight. In my mind “good light” is indirect northern light, so I want our home office on the north side. I would hate Julia’s south-facing office, but that’s just me… In addition to light issues I want the office on the front because the street is noisy and I can tolerate more noise in the office than I can in the bedroom when I’m trying to sleep.

I say all of that for a purpose. How you arrange your house will have an impact on what SHGC value you shoot for on your southern windows. In our case our primary daytime room (the home office) will be on the north side of the building. Solar heat gain is not going to affect our air conditioning bills too much on weekdays because we’re not in sunny rooms during the day – just maybe a bit on weekends when we use more rooms in the house during peak cooling hours. On the other hand Julia Angwin is spending time during peak cooling hours in a south facing room. A low SHGC value is far more important to her than it is to us.

In addition, unlike Julia and her husband, we’ll be providing heat for our ground floor tenants. On top of that, since we’re going with a mini-split system for cooling every room will be a zone for cooling and we can just cool the room(s) we’re in. But heating will be more general. While we can turn off the rads in rooms, there’s a certain level of heat we have to maintain throughout the house.

As a result, I’m expecting heating to be a bigger expense than cooling. That means we’ll benefit by having somewhat higher SHGC values on the south facing windows… If you look at the graphic above you’ll see the two scenarios where the heating cost was below $800 had very different SHGC values – 0.40 in one case and 0.56 in the other. Lower isn’t necessarily better when it comes to SHGC. If you’re in Miami it is, but not NYC.

The other issue that’s important to us when it comes to windows is how much UV is blocked. I remember visiting my sister’s friend’s apartment when I was in college. They had an incredible place in San Francisco with water views. Problem was their windows let through too much UV and it ruined a Matisse color block collage they had bought. We’re a bit paranoid about UV affecting our art and furniture. That means that UV protection will be a huge issue for us on south facing windows (and somewhat on north facing windows).

And to make things even more complicated, I think we’ll be getting Gaulhofer windows (from Austria) and Europeans measure a lot of these values differently (especially SHGC) so I’ve been struggling to convert European values into US values. But Gaulhofers are just incredible windows – their standard window is tilt-n-turn (an inswing casement that can also open a little at the top to allow ventilation), and they’re made with furniture grade wood – not the cheap crappy pine Marvin and Andersen use.

The bottom line is there are a lot of factors you should consider when picking windows and it gets a bit confusing to balance all the different criteria. But if you give it some thought it starts to make sense…

Choosing & Budgeting Hardwood Floors

Posted on April 9, 2010 by BeatingUpwind

A few days ago Dan and I went out to look at plumbing fixtures and hardwood floors just to get an idea of how much we should budget. We randomly stopped at State of The Art Wood Flooring Group over in Murray Hill (it was between the subway and Smolka). The guy at State of the Art was great and patiently answered our questions. Later in the day we did a quick stop at Lumber Liquidators just to get an idea of how cheap wood floors can go.

We want a good wood floor, but aren’t going for anything exotic. Our stair treads will be wood, so we need the same species of wood throughout the house – that would get very expensive if we went with a rare wood. That means we’re going to use oak. It’s a great material, plentiful and well priced.

White Oak vs. Red Oak

There are two primary types of oak – red oak and white oak. Dan’s been wanting white oak since it’s easier to stain any color, however red oak is a little less expensive. I was just researching the difference between the two and came across a forum thread that described how white oak has a closed pore structure and red oak has an open pore structure. That means red oak should not be used in wet conditions. (Which means when we redid our old boat’s mast step using red oak we made a pretty big mistake. The mast step sits in the bilge – so it’s frequently submerged in water. Oh well, apologies to the person who bought the boat from us!) So that makes white oak the better, more versatile choice unless you want the reddish color you get with red oak.

Solid Wood vs. Engineered Wood

One thing we did learn by visiting State of The Art Wood Flooring was that engineered wood floors don’t necessarily look like we thought they looked. Both Dan and I thought engineered floors were always glossy, but that’s not the case at all. They had engineered floors in the showroom that had these really cool finishes on them. They were a matte finish and had a little bit of texture to them. They looked like wood that had just been oiled a bit – quite beautiful actually. The texture they had on them is one that’s impossible to replicate with a solid wood floor unless you’re willing to spend big bucks. So it’s odd that the engineered floor looked more natural than solid wood… Go figure. (Of course there were plenty with a high gloss finish as well.)

Another difference between solid and engineered is that solid wood flooring needs to sit in the building for a couple weeks before installation in order to acclimate. Engineered wood doesn’t expand and contract nearly as much, so it can be put down the same day it gets to the job site.

We already knew the two were installed differently. Once engineered is down you have to be very careful about protecting it since it’s pre-finished. The flooring guy said it should go down at the very end of the project right before you do baseboards. That means the contractor we interviewed who had put it down before he’d fully closed up the walls was making a mistake. By contrast you can put solid wood floors down earlier in the process and while you have to be careful to avoid staining them, dirt won’t hurt them because they’ll be sanded during the finishing process.

For the rental unit where we may want to sand the floors every few years to freshen up the apartment, solid wood floors are best because they can be sanded many more times than an engineered floor. We’ve also decided on solid wood for our own unit because we’re going to need to match the appearance with the stair treads and matching factory finished wood could be impossible.

[By the way – don’t even think about laminate flooring. It’s essentially junky wood (or a plastic) with the equivalent of a wood grain wallpaper applied to it. Rarely ever a good idea…]

Flat Cut vs. Quarter Sawn vs. Rift Sawn

How you cut the boards from the tree makes a difference in the grain you get…

flat quarter rift diagram

Flat sawn is the standard and least expensive way to make wood flooring. When you see oak floors that have a lot of wavy grain in them – they’re flat cut. On the other end of the spectrum is rift sawn flooring. Here the grain is perfectly uniform and all in nice linear lines that run the length of the board. But if you look at the diagram you can see that because it’s a radial cut, there’s a lot of wasted wood. Quarter sawn is a compromise between flat and rift. The grain is much more uniform than with flat cut, but not as perfect looking as rift sawn – you’ll get banded lines across the boards, which can actually be quite pretty. There’s not nearly as much wastage with quarter sawn as there is with rift cuts so quarter sawn is less expensive than rift.

We also learned that there’s a category called “quarter sawn or rift sawn” that’s cheaper than just quarter sawn. If you look at the diagram you’ll see there’s one large rift sawn board in every set of quarter sawn cuts. It takes time to separate that board from the others, so if you’re OK with either then you’ll pay a little less.

Quality

There are different qualities of wood. If you don’t mind knots, then you’ll save money by getting “natural grade”. However, if you want a cleaner look with no knots then you’ll want to get “select grade”.

The Price Points

For starters there’s a range of prices for both engineered and solid wood and those ranges overlap a lot. You have to first find what you like and then look at the price. Don’t go into it thinking you want an engineered floor so you can save money. You may find the solid wood floor you like is less expensive than the engineered floor you like.

With solid vs engineered you also have to factor in the cost of installation which is much lower for engineered floors. As a general rule of thumb a solid floor will cost $4.50 to $5/sq. ft. to install, so you need to add that to the cost when you compare the prices.

Cut rate prices on 3/4″ thick unfinished solid wood flooring (from Lumber Liquidators)…

$2.89 – 4″ Red Oak, flat cut, natural grade
$2.99 – 4″ Red Oak, flat cut, select grade
$3.19 – 4″ White Oak, flat cut, select grade
$3.29 – 2 1/4″ Red Oak, quarter sawn, select grade
$3.49 – 3 1/4″ Red Oak, quarter sawn, select grade
$3.99 – 2 1/4″ White Oak, quarter sawn, select grade

They also said that given the square footage we’re doing we could take about 20 cents off each of those prices.

State of the Art Wood Flooring had a much higher quality selection to choose from, still for a basic wood floor their prices weren’t all that different than Lumber Liquidators…

approx $4/sq. ft. for unfinished 4″ white oak
approx $15/sq. ft. for unfinished oak precut for a chevron pattern
approx $13/sq. ft. for finished, engineered floor
approx $19/sq. ft. for finished, engineered cut into a chevron pattern

Add $4.50 to $5 for finishing and you see that unfinished solid wood comes out a bit less expensive than a nice engineered floor. I’m pretty sure those prices were for flat cut, select grade, so you can see Lumber Liquidators saves you approximately 25%. Still, we’re just talking about $1/sq. ft. to go with a full-service, high-quality flooring company. I’m sorta inclined to pay the extra to get the service and quality…

What We’re Budgeting

Rental (cellar level) – TBD
The rental unit (ground floor) – 3 1/4″ white oak, flat cut, natural grade – $8.50/sq. ft.
Parlor floor (areas with chevron pattern) – 2 1/4″ white oak, quarter or rift sawn, select grade – $20/sq. ft.
Parlor floor (areas with straight boards) – 3 1/4″ white oak, quarter or rift sawn, select grade – $10.50/sq. ft.
2nd floor (master bedroom, etc.) – 4″ white oak, quarter or rift sawn, select grade – $10.50/sq. ft.
3rd floor (office, guest bedroom) – 3 1/4″ white oak, flat cut, select grade – $9.00/sq. ft.
4th floor (stair hallway) – 3 1/4″ white oak, flat cut, select grade – $9.00/sq. ft.
4th floor (Dan’s art studio) – commercial grade vinyl flooring TBD

So basically $10/sq. ft. or double that where there’s a pattern.

Budgeting Tile – Cost Per Square Foot

Posted on April 7, 2010 by BeatingUpwind

I’m going to start doing quick blog posts on different things that need to be budgeted for construction/renovation. First up is tile. We went into a few tile stores to figure out price points we should be using for budgeting. Some were completely unhelpful when they heard we were just budgeting and not ready to buy, but others were great and told us what we should be thinking in terms of cost per square foot.

Studium in the A& D Building, and Kaleidoscope Tile in Chelsea were both extremely helpful and I’d recommend visiting both. Studium is pretty high end but has some surprising bargains. When we told the sales person we were on a budget his face dropped, there was an awkward pause for about 2 seconds, and then he picked right back up enthusiastically and showed us options that were perfect for people on a budget. Kaleidoscope Tile feels lower end, has good prices, and has some tiles that can deliver a very elegant look.

Low-end “builder’s grade” – about $4/sq. ft.
- e.g. 4″ x 4″ glazed tiles (the ones you see in bathrooms from the ’50s and ’60s)
Nice, inexpensive tile – about $7-8/sq. ft.
- Great for walls, may or may not be not be suitable for floors
- e.g. large format porcelain tiles (12″ x 24″)
- e.g. 12″ x 12″ stone tiles (common stone, nothing exotic)
- e.g. 1″ x 3″ carrera marble (if you can find someone who handles them in high volume)
Better quality tile for floors, etc. – $15-20/sq. ft.
- e.g. better stone in simple patterns
High quality for accents, trim, etc. – $30-35/sq. ft.
- e.g. sheets of staggered thin strips of carrera marble
- 1″ x 1″ ceramic tiles for floors
Crazy expensive stuff if you have way too much money – $80-100/sq. ft.
- e.g. architectural glass

(Prices do not include tax, etc.)

Here are some of the price points we’re using:

Rental unit bathroom

Wall tile – $7/sq. ft.
Floor tile – $13/sq. ft.

Rental unit kitchen

Floor tile – $15/sq. ft.
Backsplash – $15/sq. ft.

Our kitchen

Backsplash – $33/sq. ft.

Parlor floor half bath

Wall tile – $15/sq. ft.
Floor tile – $35/sq. ft.

Master bath

Accent wall – $35/sq. ft.
Other wall tile – $13/sq. ft.
Floor tile – $35/sq. ft.

2nd full bathroom

Small accent area – $35/sq. ft.
Other wall tile – $9/sq. ft.
Floor tile – $33/sq. ft.

Of course, we’ll go under on some and over on others, but those prices should give us a realistic amount of money to work with. Of course it helps that our bathrooms will be relatively small – so less tile will be required, keeping costs down and letting us spend more per square foot.

The Least Expensive HVAC Solution For A NYC Townhouse

Posted on March 21, 2010 by BeatingUpwind

One of the major items in our budget it the HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning) system. Every contractor seems to want to talk about it. After talking to quite a few of them it seems there’s a general consensus as to what system is best on a tight budget.

The Expensive Options

There are a lot of options. One of the more popular ones is forced air. With a forced air system you get heating and central air conditioning pumped through duct work. It seems forced air systems start at about $60K and can get much more expensive as you add things like zoning, air exchange handlers, humidifiers, air filters, etc. Plus they tend to blow dust around the house and NYC air is dirty enough as it is…

Another option is to have smaller zoned forced air systems throughout the house, typically in a dedicated closet. This basically takes the forced air idea and puts several smaller units throughout the house that handle only a floor or two. We went into some houses that had them and they’re quite noisy, and also pretty expensive.

One person suggested PTAC units which are hotel style thru-wall, combined heating and cooling units. But those generally use electricity for heating which is absurdly expensive in NYC or they require plumbing gas lines into every room (also expensive). And they’re noisy and not as energy efficient as other solutions.

Then there are decentralized heating and cooling units which are supplied with heated or cooled water and blow water over fins attached to the pipes to heat and cool the room. But their cost is pretty high.

The Consensus Solution For People On A Tight Budget

However, what everyone seems to agree is pretty effective and inexpensive (and what we’re going with) is having a boiler that powers radiant heating and combining that with a “mini split system” for cooling.

Radiant Heating

On the heating side, it turns out that hot water is more efficient than old style steam – but the concept is pretty much the same… You pump something hot through a radiator and it warms up the room – just as they’ve been doing in New York for over a hundred years. These days the plumbing is done with high quality plastic (“PEX”) tubing and it’s quite popular to make the floor the radiator and have “radiant floor” heating, but that costs substantially more than simple radiators. If we had the budget, we would do radiant floor heating since it’s the most pleasant form of heating to live with. But our budget is tight, so we’ll stick to normal rads.

Mini Split System For Cooling

On the cooling side we’ll have 2 or 3 condenser units on the roof that will pump refrigerant to small units in each room. That means every room is a zone which is great for keeping cooling costs down since we’ll only be cooling a few rooms in the house at any given time. Also, much of the noise is relegated to condensers on the roof and the units in the room are pretty quiet. The units can also act as heat pumps. However, since we’ll be positioning them near the ceiling they probably won’t be as effective at heating as the hot water rads will be. Still, if we want to take the chill out of a room we can do it without turning on the whole boiler.

The mini spit systems have three types of units for in the room. The standard is a wall or ceiling mounted unit that’s just under 3 feet long. It’s not the most attractive thing, but it can be very efficient. The the other highly efficient option is a “ceiling cassette” however, they don’t fit between 16″ joists, so you have to plan ahead for them. In our case they’re 10″ deep and our joists are only 8″, so we’re not going to use them since we’d have to create some sort of bump down in the ceiling. The last option is a ducted version which can be put in a nearby closet and then you run a short duct to one or two rooms. However, you lose some efficiency in the duct work. The most efficient mini split systems combine one condenser with one room unit and they can get up around 25 SEER, which is excellent. You can also have one condenser power multiple room units – up to 4 at a time. Though the more room units you power the lower the efficiency and SEER ratings. There are condensers that power two room units that get as high as 18 SEER, but typical SEER values are more like 15 or 16 for the multi-room systems.

A/C Sleeves In The Rental

Of course there are air conditioning solutions that are less expensive than mini split systems… In the rental unit we’ll go even simpler and put air conditioning sleeves in the sidewall. Unlike most townhouses we do have a sidewall that’s all ours (not a “party wall”). The A/C sleeves are less expensive than a mini split system and more than adequate for a rental.