Master Builders

If there is an upside to the current escalation in energy prices, with the consequent increase in the cost of food and other commodities, it is the growing awareness among Americans the the earth is not a giant piggybank that can be robbed of its resources at will.

Indeed, that piggybank is already pretty dinged and banged by greedy assaults launched on it over the past millenia, and it is only  very recently that people have begun to pay attention to the cost.  Suddenly, hybrid cars, renewable energy and, gulp, even conservation and preservation are the talk of the day.  No longer just the purview of fringe-element tree huggers, these issues have become front-page news and the concern of every thinking American.

Even the homes we live in have become a focus of attention, held accountable for 25 percent of global warming.  Increasingly, architects and builders are offering homeowners options for “green” construction that will make their homes both more efficient in energy use and less toxic to their inhabitants.  Among those designer/builders is Nick Xatzís of Pureform Design|Build in West Cornwall, CT.  Mr Xatzís specializes in eco-design and is responsible for the design and construction of the innovative Charny-Rotko residence along the Housatonic River in Cornwall Bridge, CT.

Mr.Xatzís approaches his work with a plurality of skills that may be in his genes.  “I was raised all over the place,” he said.  “My father was in NASA, and my mother was an artist and painter.  I’m still trying to reconcile their influences.”

The artistic side of his temperament held sway in his early career as he worked in the art departments of film companies in Los Angeles, building sets.  “It was all ephemeral,” he conceded, “not built to last, but I got a lot of experience in design and construction.  Later, I got commissions to design and build furniture.”

Eventually, building original furniture consumed more and more of his time, and after moving East, Ruth Charny-Rotko became one of his clients.  “We shared an underlying philosophy,” he said, “and eventually she asked me to design her house.  The Cornwall house was the first that I designed and built from scratch.  I specialize in building green for a thousand and one reasons but mostly it would be irresponsible to do anything else.”

The 1,850 square foot Cornwall house is completely modern in its design and energy efficient in the extreme.  A weekend home designed for maintenance-free entertainment of grandchildren, it features concrete walls and floors — easily mopped up — sleekly designed furniture crafted from recovered materials, and minimalist cabinets.  Mr. Xatzís admits to a small level of frustration because, while the building was designed to be carefree, it does not have the finishing touches he would have liked.  “It’s little things,” he said, pointing to joints in a window casing.  “Just a little touch of caulking would have made it look more finished, but she decided to leave it as it is.”

The design of the building, which backs up to the Housatonic River, makes ultimate use of natural breezes to cool it in the summer and relies on solar power to reduce heating costs in the winter.  Eight foot siding doors on either side of the building allow a free flow of air through the building, while the 12 inch thick mortar walls keep out both heat and cold.  The large glass panels of the doors encourage wintertime passive solar heat, while the deep roof overhangs block the sun’s rays when it is higher in the summer sky.

Even the light concrete of the deck reflects light back into the house, reducing the need for electric lights, and radiant heat in the floors keeps the building cozy on the coldest days.

There are decks on both sides of the building to encourage visitors to enjoy the outdoors and visiting grandchildren are entranced by the gate in the deck fencing that allows them to jump directly into the pool below.  “It’s like McDonald’s marketing,” he says with a grin, “getting the kids to beg their parents to come.”

Photovoltaic panels on the south-facing roof generate an estimated 4,000 Kwh of electricity each year.  Stopping in the utility room that Mr. Xatzís termed “a small-scale power plant,” he checked on the amount of solar energy produced over the winter.  “It’s produced 2,000 Kwh since last October,” he reported, “so we’ll probably exceed our expectations this year.  That power was generated during peak hours of commercial usage, and therefore will reduce the need for power from dirty sources.”

The “solar power plant” keeps the water used to heat the building at a constant 125 degrees during the winter, while a high-efficiency propane boiler stands by ready to additional hot water if needed.  The solar panels took care of 80 percent of the hot water needs last winter.

Ms. Charny-Rotko has opted for a fully energy efficient home furnished when possible with items made from recycled materials, but not everyone has the option of starting from scratch.  “We need to refurbish the housing stock we already have,” said Mr. Xatzís.  “There are many little things we can do to make our houses more energy efficient and eco-friendly — little devices that make sure, for instance, that our boilers are given the right information.  I had one client who spent $10,000 on a heating system and expected that it would be efficient, but the control unit wasn’t feeding it the right information.  Imagine an expensive Mercedes with an accelerator that has only 2 positions — full speed and stopped.  Just changing the control unit gave him 25 percent energy savings, and those are perpetual.”

He said forced air heating systems are the least efficient because “the heating medium is the air itself.  We use fossil fuels to heat the air and then drafts sweep the medium out of the room.”  Hot water systems, where the heated fluid circulates through the pipes and radiates heat, are much more efficient, especially in better sealed buildings,” he asserted.

Mr. Xatzís called the average American consumption of electricity “shameful,” noting that the US average is 18 kilowatts for each square foot, as compared to Factor 10 standards in Germany of 4 kilowatts.  Seventy percent of electricity in this country is still produced by burning coal, he reported, making the reduction of electrical use in our homes ultimately more important than switching to fuel efficient cars.

“Everyone knows about using compact flourescent lights to save energy,” he said, “but how many people know that their cable box is one of the biggest gluttons for electricity in the house.  Some people call them vampires — and yet we leave them plugged in all the time.  How much energy would we save if people had them plugged into a surge protector and just switched them off when they weren’t using them?”

The simple addition of insulating door stops will prevent drafts from entering around doors, he advised, and if homeowners are considering replacing worn-out siding, taking that opportunity to wrap the building in insulation will have a dramatic effect.  But attic and roof insulation systems are the most significant.

He said there is still a “technical dispute” about how tightly buildings should be sealed, but the most reliable science dictates that homeowners should seal their buildings as tightly as possible and install fresh air heat exchangers if necessary.  “These devices preheat the incoming cold air with the outgoing stale air,” he explained, “reducing heat loss and increasing indoor air quality.”

He even considers the designing he does on his computer one form of  “green” building, because he can plan innovative solutions that create less waste during construction and few man hours in their creation.  Whenever possible, Mr. Xatzís works from the ideal of an environmentally friendly building, but he concedes there are always compromises.  “There is no purely ‘green’ building, ” he said.  “Pure ”Green’ building doesn’t exist unless you have a bunch of Amish with hand tools working with locally grown materials, etc.  You always have to factor in how far materials have been transported, and how much embodied carbon they represent due to manufacturing.  I always look for locally grown, sustainably harvested materials first.”

“I had one client who wanted to use tropical hardwoods — rainforest wood basically — and I didn’t want to do that.  We have lumberyards with all kinds of beautiful native woods.  Even bamboo — it’s sustainable, right? It’s a grass that grows back without replanting.  But how much fossil fuel goes into transporting it here from China?  I’ll pay more for router bits from an American company when I could buy much cheaper Chinese units, because it’s all part of the same picture.  Outsourcing is a big problem in this country, but we can’t expect the CEO of a big company to behave differently than we do.  If we buy foreign products because they’re cheaper, how can we expect our big companies not to outsource our jobs?”

Mr. Xatzís said that a shift in consciousness is needed in the American public as we go forward, so we assess the hidden costs of our purchasing decisions.

Nicholas Xatzís can be reached [here].

* Article by Kathryn Boughton – taken from Passport magazine, September 2008

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Judith Linscott went to builder Nicholas Xatzís for advice on how to conserve energy and keep her house warm this winter. She figured he would look around and give her a couple of ideas. But no. He gave her an education, instead.

When I asked builder Nicholas Xatzís to check out my drafty old house and make energy conserving suggestions, I figured he’d tell me to insulate the hot water heater, put up some storm windows and actually start closing the damper when the fireplace wasn’t in use. Then I’d hire a guy to do it all. Except for the damper part, which I’d learn to do myself.

Oh, if only life were that simple. Noooo, Nick wanted to talk about the building “envelope.” About “moisture and air incursion and excursion.” About “controlled environments.” Nick wants us to educate ourselves. I wanted Nick to tell me what to do. But he’s smart. And persuasive. (Not to mention handsome.) So I tried to cooperate.

So here’s what we started with:
Every house is different. And surprise! their primary function is not to accommodate antiques or display interesting artwork but to keep the weather off us. That means cold, hot, wet. And that means controlling moisture and the movement of air. Right away, I had a sinking feeling about all this. Nick told me I needed first to define the house’s “envelope” – that is, where I want the controlled environment to begin and end.

For instance, since our house is old (which means, among other things, it is probably built on rubble and has no attic insulation) we should probably consider the basement and attic outside of the envelope. Our concern, therefore, is to efficiently heat and cool the two floors in between. Sort of a new-fangled (that is to say, more efficient) version of my grandparents closing off half the house in the winter.

Suddenly, I remembered that my sister and brother-in-law, then poverty-stricken hippies, did this most efficiently 20 years ago. They lived in a big, drafty house and at night they lowered the thermostat even further, put on wool pjs and, with their two dogs, zipped themselves into a tent they’d set up in the living room. Cozy!
But I digress.

“The smaller you define the envelope, the easier it is to heat,” said Nick. (Much of this tour was Nick patiently pointing out the obvious to me). “It’s usually not cost-effective to include the basement in the envelope.” What is cost-effective is essentially walling off the basement from the first floor – in our case, he suggested insulating between the basement’s beams. He barely glanced at the furnace. “Everybody wants to get a better boiler or furnace,” he said. “But it doesn’t make sense until you’ve addressed the bigger picture.”

So address we did. Back on the first floor, Nick walked around, looking at windows, tapping on walls. “Great house,” he said, then sighed. “It’s definitely a challenge.” Then he added: “Especially in a house of this age.” I felt like I was waiting for the doctor’s verdict.

He wasn’t happy about our windows. They’re “single glazed and drafty.” Well, I knew that. What I didn’t know is that storm windows, at about $100-$125 apiece, are a stopgap; ideally, all the windows should be replaced with double-glazed panes. Which, Nick said, cost somewhere around $800 apiece. That’s for the window, not the labor.
Hmmm.

I thought Nick might suggest stove inserts for our three fireplaces. He didn’t. Well, not really. “They’re definitely more efficient,” he said. But added: “Not as pretty.” I took that as a reprieve.

Any exterior door with glass – that’s two out of three, for us – should have a storm door, and all the doors should have gaskets around the frame. “It’s a tiny thing, but it can make a huge difference.” But windows and doors alone are not the problem. That’s because in a house as old as ours (circa 1765) there’s virtually no insulation in the walls. In fact, I learned, even much newer houses have inadequate insulation. I began to panic at the mere thought of removing all the siding and reinsulating the whole house. Major surgery.

“You can take it in pieces,” he said. “If at any time you need anything re-sided, then you can address the problem with new insulation, sheathing and put the siding back in the most modern way.”

The good news was on the second floor, where the windows in three rooms are double glazed. But then we got to the attic. Nick poked and prodded. “I don’t think you’re insulated at all up here,” he said, once more pointing out the obvious: hot air from the house was escaping into the uninsulated attic. “Your heat is just pouring up here.” Through cracks where the attic floor met the wall, he could see daylight from the second floor. “That’s bad, bad.” We could, he said, pull up the plank floors, insulate and sheath, lay down plywood, then replace the planking and tape the seams. That’s a big job, made bigger by the amount of junk we have stuffed in the attic which would have to be moved in order to do the project. Major surgery. Or we could at least plug the obvious cracks. More like a “procedure.”

Next we went outside. Nick suggested cutting back a juniper that covers part of the living-room window, lessening the warming effects of the sun in winter. Gutters, he said, should be clean and well-maintained, to keep moisture away from the house. (He may have noticed that ours are sprouting a small forest.) He also pointed out places where the clapboards were in bad shape – places that are good candidates for new insulation.

And he repeated his mantra: “Air sealing and insulation, that’s the biggest bang for your buck by far” and, “When you can, do it a portion at a time.” Insulate, sheath, tape, replace with a “high R” board on the outside. (The R-value, Nick informed me, is the level of resistance to heat flow.)

In the end, despite my own high R-value (that would be resistance to information) Nick’s tutorial did the trick. Much as I might like to return to my ignorant, wanton ways and just jack up the thermostat, I’m now pricing storm doors and eyeing rotten window frames. I’ve been reading up on energy audits, insulation and more on the U.S. Department of Energy’s “A Consumer’s Guide to Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy,” which is a little like a long conversation with Nick – only not so much fun, but downloadable. (www.eere.energy.gov/consumer).
I may even learn to close those dampers.

Nicholas Xatzís can be reached [here].

* Article by Judith Linscott – Cover story of Fall Home Improvement magazine,  a supplement to The Millerton News and The Winsted Journal, September 2008.
* Photos by Marsden Epworth

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