4.0 HPSR 12-08-2005 - Laserfiche WebLink

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2 The Landmarks Commission staff sent a letter directing that the original windows be retained and their condition documented. The contractor responded by saying that the greater energy efficiency of the new windows should outweigh the regulations that apply to houses within the historic district. A subsequent Commission hearing upheld the staff position and a City Council hearing supported the Commission's ruling. Here's the next chapter - a reporter for a local alternative newspaper talked to the property owner, and then decided to take matters into his own hands. He went to the house, picked up all the historic windows, took a sledge hammer to them, then took them to the dump and arranged to have a bulldozer run over them. Sort of civil disobedience for an 11 year old's mentality. Now I want to stop the story for just a minute. I'm not even so sure that the Landmark Commission's decision was the right one. But I'm telling you the story to demonstrate our ignorance about what sustainable development really is. First from an environmental perspective: 1. The vast majority of heat loss in homes is through the attic or uninsulated walls, not windows. 2. Adding just 3 1/2 inches of cheap fiberglass insulation in the attic has three times the R factor impact as moving from the least energy efficient single pane window with no storm window to the most energy efficient window. 3. Properly repaired historic windows have an R factor nearly indistinguishable from new, so-called, "weatherized" windows. 4. Regardless of the manufacturers' claims about 20 and 30 year lives, thirty percent of the windows being replaced each year are less than 10 years old, and many only two years old. 5. One Indiana study showed that the payback period through energy savings by replacing historic wood windows is 400 years. 6. The Boulder house was built over a hundred years ago, meaning that those windows were built from hardwood timber from old growth forests. Environmentalists go nuts about cutting trees in old growth forests, but what's the difference? Destroying those windows represents the destruction of the same scarce resource. 7. Finally, the diesel fuel used to power the bulldozer to run over the windows in all likelihood consumed more fossil fuel that would be saved over the lifetime of the replacement windows. The point that I'm trying to snake is this -sustainable development is about, but it not only about, environmental sustainability. • Repairing and rebuilding the historic wood windows would have meant that the dollars were spent locally instead of at a distant window manufacturing plant. That's economic sustainability, also part of sustainable development.