Middle Tennessee Real Estate News

Historic homes join green parade
Owners install solar panels, soy insulation to lower costs, impact
By KEVIN WALTERS • August 13, 2008

FRANKLIN —James Smith can trace the transformation of his Dutch Colonial office into a solar-powered showpiece back to one source: a broken water pipe.
One Monday morning last July, James and Lisa Smith walked into the 1920s-era home on Fifth Avenue they use as an office for their human resources business to find a pipe had come loose under an upstairs sink.
A weekend of pouring water had ruined the old home's plaster walls and framing. That meant big changes ahead for the office and the Smiths.
"It pretty much destroyed the house," James Smith said. "We talked about it. We said, 'Hey, here's an opportunity.' You take your lemons and make your lemonade."
The Smiths are finishing installation of new solar panels and other amenities they say will dramatically reduce the office's energy bills and decrease the impact of the house on the environment.
"Oil has an economic stranglehold on us," Smith said. "Anything we can do to help reduce carbon emissions and greenhouse gases, that's also something we were interested in doing."
Their project comes as property owners across the country are seeking new ways to reduce their energy bills and their impact on environmental resources such as coal and oil.
Neighbors share mind-set
While new buildings — such as the city's Columbia Avenue police headquarters under construction — will feature green roofs, retrofitting offers a way to keep historic buildings in step with newer, energy-saving features.
"The greenest building is one that already exists," said Shanon Wasielewski, interim city planning director. "It doesn't make sense to throw out existing historic materials for something new in the name of sustainability."
Yet existing buildings produce about 70 percent of emissions, downtown building owner Karen Cochran said.
Cochran, who owns the white Five Points building that is home to Starbucks, is busy trying to alleviate the impact of her building on the environment.
Cochran's property, as it happens, is just down Fifth Avenue from the Smiths, though both owners were working independent of each other. As it happens, both buildings are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Wasielewksi said she was not aware of other buildings in the city's historic districts that have undergone "green" conversion.
Last year, Cochran bought about $1,800 worth of "carbon offsets" for the building from an Austin, Texas, company, with the money largely going to a wind energy project in the Midwest.
Now, Cochran is planning even more ambitious measures, though they haven't been finalized.
She's awaiting approval of a grant from the state Department of Economic and Community Development to purchase a photovoltaic solar electrical system for the roof of the building.
Like the Smiths, she received recent approval from city historic zoning commissioners to install solar panels on the building.
The system would make the building more energy efficient and the excess electricity produced at the building could be resold. However, the building's trademark electric "Noel" sign and its holiday lights would stay in place.
Cochran, who credited the film An Inconvenient Truth with inspiring her, believes the steps she takes today for the building will affect future generations.
"I keep asking myself, 'What is it going to cost if I don't do anything? What will it cost if we, as a community, or as a country don't do anything?' " Cochran wrote in an e-mail for this story. "I am willing to spend money now, if I know I can save money in the long run, build value and off-set the high prices of utilities, while doing the right thing for my grandkids."
Investment to see return
As a small-business owner, James Smith was also mindful of the costs of updating his office.
"I wanted to go green, but I didn't want to go into the red doing it," Smith said. "I think that's the way more Americans feel about it."
After researching the project, Smith found that converting his office from a traditional electric building to a green office powered by non-carbon sources such as solar and methane power and wind would mean a dramatic reduction in his power bills.
When completed, Smith estimates his energy bills will be reduced from an average of $250-$350 a month to $25-$50 a month.
His renovation includes a new heating and air system that will remove "99.98 percent" of the building's air pollutants, not using paints with harmful volatile organic compounds and using soy-based foam insulation.