Tag Archives: Harlem Townhouses

Egress, Sprinklers & NYC Townhouses

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Having just gone through a rather arduous 5 month process to get DOB approval for our renovations I wanted to comment a bit on what I see as the biggest change in the code for townhouse owners – the fire code.

Simply put townhouses must now be sprinklered when doing a major rehab of the building. Parts of the 2008 code said you didn’t need sprinklers, but other parts said you did. The parts that said you did need sprinklers have won. However, not only does the building need to be sprinklered, but all major rooms need to be sprinklered – not just egress areas as was common in the past.

The only exceptions are 1) areas with less then 65 square feet, 2) bathrooms with less than 80 square feet, and 3) stairwells. In a lot of older townhouses (e.g. SROs) you’ll see stairwells sprinklered, but over the years they found that sprinklers in stairwells were a bad idea since they created a slip hazard as the water cascaded down the stairs. (However, they do still want hallways adjacent to stairs do need to be sprinklered).  As a result townhouse owners have to sprinkler everything except bathrooms, closets, and stairs.

We’ve heard horror stories about what fully sprinklering a building will cost – $100K+ according to some. We’ll find out soon what it will cost in our case, but there are two things that will bring down the cost for us…

First, sprinkler systems in small residential buildings that have 30 or fewer heads can be fed off the domestic water supply, IF the supply is large enough. Our building requires 29 heads, so we just barely sneak in under that provision. We have to find out whether our existing water main connection is sufficient. But at least we won’t need two connections to the main.

Next, thanks to an architect and Harlem townhouse owner who commented here on the blog, we found out that you can have a wet sprinkler system with CPVC piping (“BlazeMaster” brand) in small residential buildings. I’ve heard a number of architects say PVC is prohibited in NYC due to it giving off toxic gasses in a fire, so it’s somewhat ironic that it’s allowed to be the piping for the sprinkler system that fights the fire. A CPVC sprinkler system should be an enormous cost savings since the only other alternative is cast iron pipes – they won’t even allow copper for the sprinkler system since copper melts easily (you’d think plastic would melt even more easily).

The other issue that’s related to fire is that egress areas need a 1-hour fire rating. This means the stairwell, and the hallways connected to the stairwell, must have a 1 hour fire rating. A 1 hour fire rating is stringent, but not terribly difficult to achieve. Basically it means you need thick, solid wood doors off the egress hallways, and the walls around the stairwell (and egress hallways) have to be built a particular way.

This means you can’t have an open floorplan where the stairs are open to the rest of the floor, even though the entire building is sprinklered – at least not without special approval. We were able to get a “reconsideration” that’s allowing us to have an open floor plan on the parlor floor – the bottom floor in our unit. To get the reconsideration we’re having to put in a 1 foot “smoke baffle” around the stairwell. So there will be a 1 foot “wall” coming down from the ceiling in that area. That smoke baffle will prevent smoke from going up into the stairwell. Since fire and smoke spreads up, I think reconsiderations like that would only be granted on the bottom floor of a unit, but I’m not sure.

All in all, the fire code has gotten a lot tougher for townhouse owners. Not having a sprinkler system is not an option. And just throwing a few sprinklers in the egress areas isn’t an option either. But luckily the more extensive sprinklering is balanced by being able to use CPVC piping… We’ll see in a few days what all that will cost…

Mount Morris Park Harlem Townhouse Sales Early 2010

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I’ve been meaning to do a series of blog posts on the state of townhouse sales so far in 2010 by neighborhood. Here’s the first in that series – covering the neighborhood that’s near and dear to us – Mount Morris Park…

Generally I find there are two groups of townhouses – 1) ones that need $500K+/- in renovations, and 2) ones that don’t (at least not right away).

On the high end…

Address Date Price $/sq. ft. Notes
226 Lenox 02/10/10 $1.25M 253 20′ wide, 5 story, former mortuary, needs work
22 West 120 03/31/10 $1.65M 543 Steel and concrete minimalist interior
4 W 123 06/01/10 $1.65M 647 17′ wide, single family, 2,547 square foot (probably not including ground floor), some great details but needed work
5 W 121 07/08/10 $1.55M 353 20′ wide, three family, 4,393 square foot
19 W 120 08/12/10 $1.8M 370 20′ wide two-family w/ original details, 4,865 square feet
115 W 120 08/20/10 $1.975M 412 20′ wide, 4 story, two family, approx 4,800 square feet

The very first one, 226 Lenox was a bit of a special case – it’s probably at the high end of the ones needing around $500K in renovation. Among the others you can see the trend is generally up (slightly). The standard price seemed to be $1.65M (no matter what the size, oddly), but now that’s been broken and prices are just under $2M.

On the low end…

Address Date Price $/sq. ft. Notes
21 W 120 03/01/10 $425K 95 20′ wide, 4,472 square-foot fully occupied SRO
168 W 123 03/03/10 $530K 147 (117) Our place. 15′ wide, 5 story, totally gutted shell with fire damage, SRO with a certificate of no harassment
162 W 120 03/04/10 $500K 123 17′ wide, 4 story limestone, 4,058 square feet
104 W 120 04/30/10 $550K 194
20 W 120 05/25/10 $700K 127
128 West 123 06/30/10 $415K 196 4 story brick townhouse with mansard roof
183 Lenox 08/25/09 $795K 192 19′ wide, SRO w/storefront, 4,139 square foot

The first thing to notice is that this is still a great time to buy a townhouse shell in Harlem. There’s over a million dollar difference between the price of shells and the high end places, but you can renovate a shell into a high end townhouse for about $600-$800K, so you’re likely to net between $300K and $500K on the renovation.

Price per square foot is tricky with shells. Taking our place as an example – officially it’s 4 stories and 3605 sq. ft. However, in actuality it’s 5 stories and 4500 sq. ft. Oddly, I thought the number of stories would get fixed as we went through the DOB plan approval process, but I saw the plan examiner look right at the plans and call it a 4 story building. However, they are now billing it as having 4,500 sq. ft. – at least that much is getting corrected. What this means is as you look at townhouses you need to calculate the real square footage and determine your own price per square foot.

The bottom line is, like the upper end, there is an upward trend in prices for shells. Not counting the fully occupied SRO (which you wouldn’t want to touch with a 10′ pole unless you wanted to be a landlord, not a home owner), our place was pretty much the low price on a price per square foot basis at $117/sq. ft. The others since that time have been more money on a price per square foot basis (which is how you really need to price buildings like these). Assuming the recent ones are 4 story buildings misclassified as 3 story buildings – that means the actual price per square foot for shells is now in the mid-$140s.

Eggersmann Gives Lower Price Option For Kitchen

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A while back we discovered Eggersmann at the A&D building and really liked them. In fact we liked them better than Poliform which is saying a lot – our last kitchen was by Poliform and Poliform’s sense of design resonates with us, but Eggersman is even better (in our opinion). When we first talked to them, Eggersmann was nice enough to mock up a kitchen for our space and quote us a price, but the price didn’t really work with our budget.

Well, months passed and then someone at Eggersmann found my previous blog post mentioning them. They contacted us and asked if we had made a choice yet. Thanks to problems with DOB, we hadn’t. They noticed that I had mentioned that their last price was too high, and offered to design a lower cost kitchen. Our kitchen design and layout had changed somewhat since their last proposal. The biggest change was moving the coat closet further into the building – across from the stairs rather than across from the kitchen. The other change was getting rid of the upper cabinets and taking the cabinets at each end to the ceiling (which is 10.5′ tall). The net result was a 1/3rd savings in cost. We need to see where the other numbers come in, but we’re thinking we just might be able to afford an Eggersmann kitchen, which is quite exciting…

Dan and I had gone through several rounds of kitchen designs but hadn’t been 100% happy with anything we came up with. Many of the designs reminded us of our last kitchen and we really wanted this one to be different. Finally I proposed a layout one day and Dan liked it. That’s the layout Eggersmann laid out (and improved slightly). Here are some 3D renderings Eggersmann did for us…

3D Rendering of Harlem brownstone kitchen

Instead of having coat closets across from the kitchen, we’re going to have a bench where people can sit and talk. This will essentially be the view from the bench. The door to the right is the front door. The upper panels in that door will be glass. The column to the left will house a Sub Zero 736 TCI fridge. At over $6,000 it’s our one huge extravagance in the kitchen, but we loved the 700 TCI we had in our last kitchen… The shelves in the center island will be used for wine and cookbooks. Dog leashes and the like will go in the cabinets below.

3D Rendering of Harlem brownstone kitchen

This shows a few of the details more clearly. We’re envisioning Corian (white) counter tops, a stainless back splash. The range is a compromise. We’re going with a 30″ Electrolux when Dan would really love a 36″ Wolf, but it costs nearly $4,000 more. The range hood was one of our challenges. The shape of it will probably be a bit different than what you see, but luckily we can exhaust directly out the wall, so no chimney is needed. We’re also thinking of put lighting on the top of the shelf as well as the bottom so the wall isn’t so dark.

3D Rendering of Harlem brownstone kitchen

Seen from a different perspective… The wall to the right will be exposed brick, and the front doors will have glass in the top panels. The window looks huge as it is, but looking at it now I realize it wasn’t drawn big enough. It’s 4 feet wide, 7 1/2 feet tall, so it will be another foot higher (at least). It won’t be one huge piece of glass. Instead it will look a bit like a french door (two vertical casement windows).

3D Rendering of Harlem brownstone kitchen

This last one shows how we’re hiding the microwave in a nook with additional cabinets. Up by the ceiling, above the cabinets, will be the A/C. We’re going with a “mini-spit ductless” system and that location gives us a nice place to hide the unit. (Not going with concealed units is another budgetary concession). The large wall will be exposed brick, so while the cabinets will be white / off-white, there will be plenty of color and warmth in the kitchen.

The other thing I’ve realized looking at these renderings is that the radiator we were going to put under the window will conflict with opening the cabinets. Dan and I are debating where the radiator should go.

So we’re crossing our fingers hoping we can get the Eggersmann kitchen. It’ll be really wonderful. Their sense of design is really special and their fit and finish is incredible.

Finally Received Plan Approval From NYC DOB…

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This past Monday we FINALLY got approval for our renovations from the NYC Department of Buildings. It was almost exactly a 5 month process – one month to get the first plan review and then a plan review every 2 to 4 weeks after that for 4 months. We got approved on the 5th plan review. This time we were tired of getting rejected and decided to go to the plan review this time to see what was happening. It was good we did because the plan examiner literally said “I’m only approving the plans because the owners are here”. Apparently the plan examiner and our expediter had gotten to the point where they really just didn’t like each other very much. Luckily for us his objections were minor this time and he was willing to overlook them. For example, our architect had spelled out all the R values in the wall, but didn’t show the calculation converting from R values to U values that were input into the energy calculations. And we hadn’t submitted a “street tree worksheet” to document the fact that we have a tree outside our building – that he put off ’till we pull permits.

Anyway, it’s over and we’re now on to getting a final bid from our contractor, and getting everything ready to apply for the mortgage. Hopefully, after all this, we’ll be able to afford the renovation we want to do. Knocking wood…

I know I’ve neglected the blog lately, but the last 3 months have felt like purgatory. We were just sitting and waiting. Honestly, I didn’t want to focus on it too much because it would have just been frustrating. It’s a good thing we weren’t buying the building with a rehab loan. If we had closing would have had to wait until all of this was done. As it is the house isn’t costing us that much to maintain right now – just taxes and paying a guy to keep it clean so we don’t get violations.

The benefit of the wait was that our architect had time to do more detail drawings which will help clarify things with the contractor. And the biggest change was that we decided to swap the floor plans for two floors. We’re going to have the home office one flight up from parlor and the master bedroom two flights up from parlor (instead of the other way around). It should result in less stair climbing and we get a laundry shoot in the master bedroom, which will be nice. When we get the electronic versions of the approved plans I’ll post them here.

In the future one or both of us with go with our expediter when he needs to get changes approved at DOB. Lesson learned.  😉

NYC DOB Rejects Our Plans For No Good Reason

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Well, today was plan review day and we got rejected, AGAIN. The reasons this time were just bizarre…

The first thing that was rejected was the energy review. Our architect did this complex analysis using a web-based program provided by the federal government where you enter all the characteristics of the building including wall types, window types, light fixtures, etc. and it confirms compliance with the 2010 standards that are in effect for New York State. But the plan examiner rejected it because NYC is still on 2007 energy standards and the 2010 standards aren’t being phased in until later this year. They literally told us to come back in 24 days, on July 1, since they’ll accept our architect’s energy analysis on that date. So we got rejected for showing compliance with a more demanding standard that they’re going to use in less than a month. Go figure.

Second major item was the sprinkler system (again). This time the plan examiner wanted documentation that there was sufficient pressure in the water main to support the sprinklers being on the domestic water supply despite the fact that the code specifically states that sprinkler systems with 30 or fewer heads can feed off the domestic water supply. He also wanted all the pipe sizes and sprinkler heads specified, but that’s typically done when the sprinkler system is certified – it doesn’t need to be done at this point and requiring it now is just being difficult.

The biggest issue that he raised is that he’s insisting we do a pressure test on the water main to do the calculations to determine the sizes of pipes that are required for the sprinkler system. It takes 4 to 6 weeks to get DEP to do a flow test, so that means we can’t go in for a plan review until that’s done. Again, the flow test is typically done after DOB approves the overall plan – he’s just being obstructionist IMHO.

At one point the plan examiner insisted that we needed 2 hour fire rated walls around the stairwell, not 1 hour walls. Our expediter stuck to his guns and then it took the plan examiner 10 minutes of searching the code to realize we were right and he was wrong. Why do they have people doing plan exams who don’t know the code? If the code is just horribly complicated then why not have plan examiners specialize in certain building types? If we had someone who really knew the code issues for townhouses then maybe they’d know the code well enough to do their job properly.

Then the plan examiner was telling our expediter that he saw errors in the “I-Cards” for the building. I-Cards were the predecessor to Certificates of Occupancy, which came out in 1938. So in other words, he was holding us responsible for errors previous building owners made dating back to 1938 or before. I mean please… The whole point of our rehabbing the building is to bring it up to code and get a C of O. How can inaccuracies on the old I-Cards matter when the point of the exercise is to make them obsolete by getting a C of O?

Next time Dan and I will go to the plan review to prove the point that we’re not some nefarious slumlord trying to build a crappy substandard building. We’re just regular guys. Plus, with the enormous workload that DOB is under right now I just don’t understand how it’s productive for them to keep having us come back over and over again for stupid little things.

Now imagine if we were trying to purchase the place with a rehab loan and needed to get approved plans to close the loan. Obstructions like this can really hamper redevelopment of blighted buildings – for no good reason because they can tank deals. And it’s the reason why it can take FOREVER to close when the buyer needs financing to purchase. I’m sure more than a few deals have gone bad because DOB took too long and the contracts expired.