Most people have probably heard by now about the new rules put into place by the EPA concerning lead paint and renovations. The goal of the rules is to increase awareness of the danger of lead paint and decrease the risk of harm to occupants of old homes where lead paint is present. The rules apply to projects that involve renovation or painting of houses built prior to 1978 (when lead paint was banned).
As a historic restoration contracting company here in Massachusetts, almost all of the buildings that we work on contain lead paint so we need to pay close attention to the requirements.
The rules, known as the RRP (Repair, Renovate, and Paint) guidelines have four main components. The first is notification. Contractors must notify their clients to the dangers of lead paint. This is done by giving them a copy of the EPA's Renovate Right booklet.
The second component is certification: any company working on buildings that contain lead paint must be certified. The EPA logo on our home page shows that we have completed this step. In addition, workers must receive training and be individually certified to carry out renovations involving lead paint. Our carpenters have received this training (as have I).
The third component consists of the actual procedures for carrying out the work. If the work involves disturbing more than 6 square feet of lead paint on the interior or 20 square feet on the exterior, the project must follow the guidelines. This includes properly setting up the work area with plastic and sealing off the work area from the rest of the house. The rules indicate correct procedures for using protective clothing, removal and disposal of lead paint-containing items, and for cleaning the site after the work is complete. They also ban certain techniques, such as grinding or burning lead paint.
These procedures are changing how renovation work is carried out. It's now very important to think ahead and take care of any demolition or invasive work while the containment area is set up. Painters must use different techniques, such as wet sanding. And all of us need to know when protective clothing and respirators must be donned.
The final component of the RRP rules is record keeping. From now on, when we carry out a renovation project we must keep records that verify the procedures we carried out for notification, testing, setting up, and cleaning.
A further wrinkle is that some states, including Massachusetts, have taken over the enforcement from the EPA. Contractors in Massachusetts must follow the new regulations written by the state, not the EPA rules.
There is a lot of anger and confusion in the contracting industry over these rules. First, it is an industry that is slow to change and these rules represent a big change, and some contractors are angry because they hate having to change the way they have always done things. I, for one, am in favor of increased protection from lead paint, so our company intends to fully comply with the rules. However, some of the anger out there, quite frankly, is justified because the rules are overly complicated and, in some cases, appear to contradict OSHA regulations. Since both the EPA and OSHA have the power to enforce their rules through fines, what is a contractor to do when it is impossible to be in compliance with both?
I think that eventually the added steps put in place to protect both occupants and workers will become second nature. In fact, I predict that the contractors that are in full compliance with the rules will start turning in contractors that are in obvious violation. Just recently a video surfaced on Youtube of a couple of painters in Maine grinding lead paint off a house and creating a cloud of lead dust. This type of work cannot be tolerated anymore. It's dangerous to the occupants and to the workers.
There is a significant cost to comply with these rules between training classes, certification fees, the materials and protective clothing required, and the extra time involved in setting up. Homeowners owe it to themselves to ensure that their contractors are certified, trained, and following the procedures. Yes, you can get a lower price by hiring a company that ignores the rules, but if they contaminate your home or yard with lead paint dust and endanger you and your family, are those savings worth it? Ask to see the contractor's certification and the training certificates for each individual worker. By law now, these must be on site at all times.
Let us know if you have any questions on the impact of these new rules on potential projects at your home. We're always happy to talk!
Resources:
EPA's RRP information
Massachusetts Lead Paint Program
Comments? Questions? Snide remarks? All are welcome! We'd love to hear from you so please comment on our posts.
Mark Landry is the President of Landmark Services, Inc, one of the premier old house renovation contracting firms in Massachusetts. He loves old houses and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your renovation, restoration, or addition.
This past Thursday I attended a lecture by architect Matthew Bronski about the year in Italy he spent studying the architecture of that country. He wanted to see why some ancient buildings have survived to this day while others failed miserably.
One of his conclusions was that there is a "Darwinian" evolution in architecture. That is, through a long process of trial and error, builders and designers learned what worked and what didn't. They learned, for example, that large roof overhangs protected the wall below by keeping a lot of the water away. Cathedral builders started with modest, tried and true arches as used in Roman aqueducts and gradually learned that these arches could go higher and lighter than they ever would have thought. Sometimes the builders were too ambitious and their cathedrals collapsed while under construction, but even through these failures they learned important lessons.
As this knowledge was passed on from one generation of designers and builders to the next, the architectural language may have evolved but the underlying lessons such as how to shed water from a window opening were still relevant. Follow these guidelines and your building would last. Veer away from them and it's anyone's guess as to the outcome.
This theme came up again at the "Green" symposium that I mentioned in the previous post. Charles Sullivan of the Cambridge Historical Commission made the exact same observation in the context of our own domestic historic architecture: the wise designer and builder studied and learned from those of previous generations. Even as styles change, the basic principles of protecting buildings from the elements remain fairly constant (although, of course, the materials change with time. I have seen 18th century windows flashed with strips of birch bark. Today we usually use metal flashing for this purpose).
These observations reminded me of a story I once heard about Walter Gropius, one of the fathers of modern architecture. Gropius was not interested in learning from previous generations. The story is that when he came to Harvard's Graduate School of Design he had his staff throw out all the models that Harvard had of the world's great buildings. He was creating something knew, he seems to have reasoned, and therefore the past had little to teach him.
So it is of no surprise that while Gropius was pushing the boundaries of architectural design, his buildings failed miserably at one of the principle measures of architecture: handling the elements. Instead of studying the details of the architecture that came before him, he invented new details. For hundreds of years, New England homes had steeply pitched roofs covered with overlapping shingles. This system handled the snow and rain admirably. Gropius used flat roofs. And they leaked. Almost immediately.
Indeed the entire realm of "modern architecture" is replete with examples of building envelope failure. A notorious example is I.M.Pei's addition to the National Gallery. Pei developed a new system for hanging the stone panels that make up the facade, instead of relying on proven techniques. His system did not allow enough room for expansion of the panels and they started crumbling. As a result, the entire facade had to be removed and replaced at a cost of about $85 million. Talk about non-sustainable design!
In my eye, this is the same hubris that was the fatal flaw of the designers of the Titanic. In the residential field, we have seen many new systems and methods fail miserably because their promoters, too, failed to learn the important lessons taught by the architecture of preceding generations.
As a preservation contractor, I am constantly observing the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century buildings that I work on- and the new houses that are being built today. It's a sad fact that the carpenter who installed those strips of birch bark over the windows of that 18th century house had a more intuitive grasp of this importance of this type of detail than many of the new home builders today. Instead of a system of overlapping materials many of todays carpenters rely on things such as sticky tape to keep water out. Yes, that will keep water out for a while, but what happens when that tape fails?
That's why so many historic houses have lasted so much longer than the houses being built today. To me, if a building is not designed and built to last for a century or more, it is not sustainable no matter how much bamboo or CFL lightbulbs are used. So in my eye, the historic houses we work on and preserve for future generations are the very essence of sustainability.
My carpenters know that longevity of our work is of prime importance to me. We do not tolerate work that will not last, not just for the warranty period, but for many, many years beyond. To do this often requires advising our clients to invest in better materials, spanish cedar for exterior trim, for example, instead of inexpensive primed pine that will rot out in 5-10 years. But it also requires instilling an attitude in the field that speed is less important than getting the details right.
How about you? What do you think about the "sustainable" architecture of today?
Comments? Questions? Snide remarks? All are welcome! We'd love to hear from you so please comment on our posts.
Mark Landry is the President of Landmark Services, Inc, one of the premier old house renovation contracting firms in Massachusetts. He loves old houses and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your renovation, restoration, or addition.
Yesterday Landmark Services co-sponsored a symposium called "The Greenest Building is Already Built". It was meant to explore the relationship- good or bad- between sustainability and historic preservation. Five panelists provided wonderful presentations exploring the issues from divergent points of view.
Not surprisingly, there was almost universal agreement that preservation of historic buildings is "green" in that it: a) reduces the amount of debris tossed into landfills and b) it captures the embodied energy that it took to make, transport, and install the materials of which these buildings are made. Many pointed out, too, that present day designers could benefit by studying some of the features found in historic buildings, such as large overhangs to keep out the summer sun.
There was significant disagreement, however, between the preservationists in the room and those who advocate for "deep energy retrofits". A deep energy retrofit typically includes replacing the existing windows, and removing siding and exterior trim in order to install a layer or two of rigid foam insulation over the sheathing. Advocates pointed to the large energy savings (often 50%) and the potential for other benefits such as increased comfort and better indoor air quality. But preservationists decried the wholesale removal of original building fabric and did not like the impact that such a retrofit has on the exterior appearance.
My own view is somewhere in the middle. As a historic preservation contractor, I am obviously favor preserving original building material. However, I am also painfully aware that most existing housing stock is woefully under-insulated and this cannot be ignored as the availability and cost of fossil fuels becomes more unpredictable.
Would I advocate replacing original windows? No I usually would not. The arguments against window replacement are pretty clear. Restoring your original windows and adding a good quality storm window makes more sense financially, aesthetically, and environmentally.
Would I advocate for the removal of siding or roofing and installing rigid foam over the sheathing? Under certain conditions I probably would. If the siding and roofing were going to replaced anyway this approach might make sense if the new exterior siding and trim were detailed in such a way as to maintain the building's original appearance. The difficulty is that by adding 3-6" of foam on top of your roof, and 2-4" to your walls, you need to make the trim boards that much wider. It's tough to do this without creating an eyesore.
But for me it all depends on the significance of the building. I can see taking this approach on a straightforward 1930s Colonial, for example, but it almost certainly would be a mistake for most 18th and 19th century homes because a) these homes are fewer in number and therefore more significant and b) it would be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the subtle architectural details that give these homes their beauty.
Our approach, here at Landmark Services, depends, of course, on the overall scope of the project and , more importantly, the goals of the clients. If a house is getting gutted anyway, it makes sense to insulate it as well as you can. We use either spray foam or dense packed cellulose because both methods stop most of the air movement through a wall or roof cavity. However on many of our projects we are opening up the walls in selected areas only, such as the kitchen or the bathrooms. In these houses we often just insulate those areas and the attic and leave the rest of the walls untouched unless one of the clients' goals is to reduce energy consumption as much as possible. Frankly, when it comes to old house renovations that is usually not the goal. Our clients want to reduce the energy efficiency and comfort, yes, but they want to maintain the look and character of their house as well.
For a more detailed look at my thoughts on insulating old houses download the paper that I wrote on the topic here.
By the way, the other co-sponsor of yesterday's symposium was a company called Terrene. They are a terrific resource for sustainable building materials such as cabinetry, counters, and flooring.
Comments? Questions? Snide remarks? All are welcome! We'd love to hear from you so please comment on our posts.
Mark Landry is the President of Landmark Services, Inc, one of the premier old house renovation contracting firms in Massachusetts. He loves old houses and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your renovation, restoration, or addition.
We have worked with the owners of a ca. 1895 Shingle Style house just south of Boston for over five years. We started by renovating the exterior, stripping the house of its shingles and installing new ones, rebuilding the porches, and restoring the carriage house. Two years ago we completely renovated the third floor (I'll post an article about that at a later date).
Last year they asked us to renovate the kitchen. The husband, Dave, is a very tech savvy guy and also the main cook in the family. He wanted to be very involved in designing the kitchen so we decided that he and I would design it together using Google Sketchup. So over a period of 5-6 weeks we sent files back and forth, developing the details of the kitchen.
Goals
Their old kitchen was dark and dated. The cabinets, installed some time in the 1980s were of mediocre quality and were poorly designed. Also, their kitchen tended to be the depository for homework, backpacks, bills, cell phones, briefcases and toys. It was cluttered and non at all functional. A successful renovation would need to provide better organization, a lighter and more timeless feeling, and would include places for the kids to do homework and for a mini-office. Here's what we started with.
Design
The interior designer, Tricia McDonagh, provided us with a great starting point by drawing a floor plan delineating the locations of the cabinet runs, the eating area, a desk, and the mudroom cabinets. Tricia also did a fantastic job selecting the finishes: lighting fixtures, tile, paint colors, fabrics, etc.
We imported those floorplans into Sketchup and started modeling the cabinets.
Our first efforts were rather crude models used just to verify the overall space planning. Here's one such effort:
We gradually modelled every cabinet, desk, and cubby throughout the space to the point where we knew exactly where everything would be stored. Before any cabinets were made, we had determined homes for cutlery, dishes, pots and pans, dry food, produce, placemats and everything else that needed to be put away.
Eventually the Sketchup models became more refined. It's easy to import models of your exact appliances, as seen here.
We also indicated cabinet door details and other construction details and dimensions so that our cabinet shop would have a clear understanding of what to build. Here are some views of the island.
Construction
One of the infrastructure problems with the old kitchen was that it was very cold. More than half the kitchen was over a crawl space instead of a full basement, so we insulated the crawl space carefully with closed cell spray foam and installed radiant heating in the floor.
This shot shows the arched openings that we created to match ones found elsewhere in the house.
The great thing about having the clients so intimately involved in the design process was that they were so familiar with the kitchen model that they felt right at home in the real kitchen. They knew right where to put everything! The other benefit is that there were no surprises. 3D modeling is a great tool to help clients visulaize the space prior to construction.
Here's the finished space. What do you think? The first shot is looking over the island towards the built-in banquette (we also custom built the trestle table). A newly renovated and much more functional mudroom is through the arched opening at the right.
(Note: The interior design was done by Patricia McDonagh Interior Design; photographs below © 2010 Kevin A. Latady, photographer)
This view shows the cooking center and island. Dual sinks (one in the island) allow others to help with the prep and cleanup. The clean lines of the painted cabinets, dark counters, and stainless appliances are just what the clients wanted to achieve.
A wall of full height cabinets provides plenty of storage for dry foods, small appliances, spices and oils.
Comments? Questions? Snide remarks? All are welcome! We'd love to hear from you so please comment on our posts.
Mark Landry is the President of Landmark Services, Inc, one of the premier old house renovation contracting firms in Massachusetts. He loves old houses and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your renovation, restoration, or addition.