Brookline MA, No oil or Natural gas For New Construction

Jamie Hall said:

@ethicalpaul -- yes, Brookline is all about new construction and gut renos. Do you know the saying about the camel's nose under the tent wall? It's soon followed by the whole camel...

Sure.
Unless the camel doesn't like what he smells.

There are two ways I see that the general public will look at switching a fuel source.

1. Artificially lowering the cost to install/operate an alternative heat source.

2. The cost of the conventional fuel skyrockets and resourceful people find alternative fuel more attractive.

The latter could be done by leveraging a tax on the "cheap and dirty" fuel which is currently available.

Or by simply banning the current fuel's use.

Not sure how I feel about any of this.....
Glad I live and work where I do.

@ethicalpaul I live in Brookline and @Jamie Hall is on the right track, they make incremental changes that are for the "greater good" or "doesn't conform the the new Code standards". It won't be long until we cannot get a building permit to replace one of our boilers unless it meets some level of efficiency that can't be achieved by steam.

The problem is we are a community that operates based on "Town Meetings" , which are poorly publicized and held at times that most people are at work. Sound familiar, maybe election day shouldn't be on a Tuesday.

I think we should be looking to expand our nuclear generating capacity but put it under the control of the Navy. Somehow, a large percentage of the fleet has been able to operate under nuclear power without incident since the 1950's . That can't be said for our current privately owned nuclear power industry.

gfrbrookline said:

@ethicalpaul, you referenced the grid being able to handle the demand as there is limited growth in your area, in Brookline we also have a tremendous amount of new construction/gut rehab. The trend is to tear down existing homes and build McMansions, as for complexes there are 4 going up within 4 miles of me we 100plus apartment each. We are looking to build a new elementary school because we can not handle the amount of families moving into the area and had to add a second campus to the high school to accommodate the number of students. We are the first town out of Boston, which is also going through a huge population growth.

If something slows down gut rehabs and tear downs -> McMansions I won't shed any tears.

If new construction has to look at something much more efficient like ground source heat pumps (which is really an indirect form of solar heating), I think that'd be great too. I put in a ground source heat pump with a vertical well at my old house in CT (NG wasn't available unless I ran it there) and I'm middle class (to Jamie's point about someone having to pay)

As for the complexes, I think the new regulation did not apply to large buildings.

And look, if it falls on its face, then people will stop passing these things. But the only way to have better things is to force them sometimes.

Your posts are always welcome to me @Jamie Hall !

Your parishioners are fine. This regulation is only for new construction or gut renos. I am not advocating for gut renos...I don't care for them. So much waste and disposal.

I too would be opposed to such a change being forced on existing homes.

PS: I am very much in agreement with the concerns you addressed in your first paragraph above.

Drake Landing Solar Community: https://www.dlsc.ca

Amen, brother @gfrbrookline . One of the biggest problems -- if not the biggest -- of the whole "let's go green and renewable" enthusiasm is that the folks beating the drums have simply no concept at all of what is involved, either in urban areas like Brookline or Roxbury (or Manhattan!) or in rural areas. Nor do they have any appreciation for the economics of the whole adventure -- again, either in urban areas or rural areas. No fault of theirs, really -- they've never lived in either one.

ethicalpaul said:

The key to electric heating is to move the heat rather than generate it. This would be ground source and/or air source heat pumps. But that was said earlier in the thread

Oh quite true. Just for laughs, and I know we don't put prices on the Wall, could someone PM me with the cost of retrofitting Cedric's main home with either a ground source or air source heat pump system (there's plenty of land). I'd really be curious.

Particulars: design low outside temperature -10 F
Total heat loss at design: 330,000 BTUh
Area heated: 7,000 square feet
Existing system: vapour steam
No existing ductwork present
Constraint: National Register Property interior finishes must be kept intact or repaired in kind. No visible duct work permitted (Unico type high velocity might be acceptable, if no draughts).
Power available: 200 amp single phase 240/120.

What else do you need to know for a ballpark guess?

As for new or gut rehabs, there 7 gut rehabs going on right now within 5 blocks of me. All but one single family row houses that have sold in the last 6 months are being turned into condos.

Like I said before I think we need to move to renewable energy sources but in Brookline's case we are putting the cart ahead of the horse. We need to green the grid first. That being said my favorite view on earth, Brenton Point in Newport, RI, has been sullied by the Block Island Sound Wind Farm. I totally get why Ted Kennedy opposed Cape Wind so strongly, imagine putting a solar farm in Yellowstone.

Agreed Rev. @Jamie Hall

Hello, I think there is another factor to mention that I haven't seen here yet. That's the health effects of burning gas indoors. From this report: https://heetma.org/gas-cooking-and-asthma/ "The analysis showed that children living in a home with a gas cooking stove have a 42% increased risk of current asthma (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.23, 1.64), and a 24% increased lifetime risk of asthma". So, to me, this discussion needs to be bigger than just energy, and include health. Asthma costs a bit over 50 billion dollars a year in the US. I'd rather spend that money on improving buildings and infrastructure. More to think about

Yours, Larry

Hi, No doubt there are many contributing factors. Pollutant levels measured indoors however can far exceed what would be considered actionable levels if they were outdoors. Seems there aren't laws about how polluted indoor air can be. Good sense should be enough, but ... Tomorrow would be a great day to measure some pollutants indoors!

Yours, Larry

A trend that I've noticed in what I'll call 'post modern thought' is that the intended results are the only conceivable results; unintended consequences are an impossibility, ignored if possible & denied if not. If you look at any of current crop of environmental restrictions with this in mind, everything makes a lot more sense.

Brookline is just one town. California has a law on the books that there will be NO fossil fuels being burnt in any house in the state by the year 2050. Currently there is a ban on natural gas hookups in NY City and Long Island. This is just going to get worse. The environmentalists both get pipelines banned and then complain that they cant get natural gas. SMH

It's all cost relitive. If fossil fuels double in price alternatives look good!

Solar only works during the day, most heating demand is at night.

Electric car charging will be most likely all at night.

There will need to be generation at night, wind is sparatic. We need hydro/nuke/fossil fuels/biomass to pick up the slack.

That is how electrification goes, we are all connected together, and most of our usage patterns are remarkably similar.

Hi @Steamhead , To my understanding, much of the data comes from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, where they just measure what they find. I don't think they adjust anything. No doubt the stoves they have measured could be made to perform better with the right technician who has the right equipment. For years, I've been trying to get folks to actually use their range hoods, and even that's an uphill battle. It's sorta like the ongoing discussion on unvented space heaters.
Years ago in the water heating world we had ungrounded electric tap heaters, which the manufacturers claimed were "safe in the hands of intelligent, able-bodied adults". Only problem was children being electrocuted by them. It's hard to design equipment that can't be mis-used.

Yours, Larry

> @Steve_Wheels said:
> Brookline is just one town. California has a law on the books that there will be NO fossil fuels being burnt in any house in the state by the year 2050. Currently there is a ban on natural gas hookups in NY City and Long Island. This is just going to get worse. The environmentalists both get pipelines banned and then complain that they cant get natural gas. SMH

The ban in NYC and LI is due to capacity issues not being green!

No, I beg to differ. The objections which I have put forward -- mostly economic -- are not strawmen. They are all too real. They are also largely invisible to many of most influential people.

So I will restate them, quite simply: where is the money going to come from to do all these wonderful things for the people in urban centres -- not the ones on Beacon Hill or the Upper West Side or Silicon Valley, but the ordinary Joe and Jill? Where will the money come from to upgrade the electrical grid so someone in a rural village -- never mind a farm -- can have enough reliable electricity? Where will the money come from to build the generating capacity (I don't care what kind)?

This is an interesting debate that is going on in cities across N.America in an attempt to address very real CO2 emission issues. In no jurisdiction (that I know of) is anyone suggesting that buildings have to move off their current heating (and cooling) fuel sources. What they are suggesting is that by mandating certain design standards (like high performance building envelopes) the buildings in the future will have smaller, more manageable heating and cooling loads. Then by mandating that all future buildings NOT have fuel burning sources, but rather demonstrably more efficient heating sources (like basic to cold climate, to geothermal, even to municipal waste heat capturing heat pumps with COPs way above 3 seasonally, these smaller heating loads can easily b e covered by the current grid, most especially if more and more of that grid is fueled by renewables.

My city is working on a plan to do just this, but is going one step further in suggesting that all new construction have PV solar built in from day one, to the capacity of the size of the roof, and ideally sized to carry the expected load of the house. This way, the grid has in place the additional capacity needed to crafty the additional load. The idea of course is to reduce the net/net CO2 foot print of buildings over time.

Contrary to pubic perception, the price of installed PV solar has fallen through the floor. When I first started installing small off grid solar installations, we were paying ~$100/watt for the raw panels. Now, raw panels, retail can be had for $.27, with a complete, soup to nuts installation for under $2/watt. If that install is done in conjunction with new construction, the cost can drop to ~$1.50/watt. Typical 2000 sq ft house might “want” 5-10kw of PV depending on exposure, a new construction “add on” of $7,500 to $15,000 exclusive of any tax incentives. An addition that is less costly than Granite counter tops, but reduces the energy bill by nearly 100% if well designed.

This, is the wave of the future, and if you look at the weeds, you will realize that it is a no brainer.

As a side note, even though our city is only in the talking stage of a plan for 2030-2050, nearly every door knob in town got a hang tag full of misinformation about “how this was going to impact this/impact that”, how ever house was going to have to get rid of it’s current gas ranges and cook tops, how every one would have to upgrade their foundations to support solar panels (huh???) and guess who paid for the misinformation tags? The local Nat gas supplier, the local electric utility, three local oil refineries. Sometimes it pays to read the fine print.

Icarus

PS. As many of you here know, the sweet spot for low temp emitters, ideally infloor radiant heat is right in the breadbasket of air to water heat pumps...under ~110f. Once again installation cost in new construction is not much of an add on.