 My name is Jenna Antonino-Demari and I have the pleasure of directing the Burlington 2030 District, a private public partnership working to reduce building energy consumption, water usage and transportation emissions 50% by 2030. We are part of a national network of 2030 districts and we specifically work with property owners throughout the city of Burlington to reduce operating costs, increase asset value and help to create a healthier community. This is a program that directly supports the city's net zero energy vision and is managed by a local nonprofit organization called the Vermont Green Building Network, which I also have the pleasure of directing. Our ultimate vision is to work towards ensuring all Vermonters have green healthy spaces to live, work and play. During today's webinar celebrating this newly released city of Burlington historic buildings path to net zero energy guide for buildings and homeowners we will be hearing from three speakers. Mary O'Neill principal planner for the city of Burlington, Aveline Killian principal of CX associates and Jesse Beck architect and president of Freeman French Freeman architects. And without further ado, I would like to welcome Mary O'Neill principal planner from the city of Burlington Mary will focus her talk on how historic buildings are defined, including an overview of the city of Burlington from an historic preservation perspective. She'll also introduce the newly released city of Burlington historic buildings path to net zero energy guide for building and homeowners so welcome Mary thanks so much for being here today with us. And thank you for that that wonderful introduction for this project we're so very proud to have have this this guidebook released. But it's important to frame this and we're the history that Burlington's history here. Our preservation activities began shortly after urban renewal and there's few people that can that can claim that they don't understand what happened in their communities and certainly in Burlington urban renewal erase 27 acres of our downtown between 1966 and 68. This came simultaneous with the Historic Preservation Act of 1966, which established this federal state partnership that we enjoy and establish the role of a certified local government. We also established a national register of historic places the national landmarks program. So we have good footing there from the 60s we came out of pain into some wonderful programs. Certainly this gave communities including Burlington opportunities to commence historic survey work, which state did beginning in the late 70s. Burlington zoning ordinance in 1973 included an historic building district and a discrete list of historic building so that we certainly put a foothold in on the importance of historic buildings, maintaining the character that we understood in Burlington. We also instituted this zoning ordinance and historic advisory board to involve to advise a planning commission on project applications. So this was really the genesis of our Historic Preservation Review Committee, a board that's been enabled by Burlington's important appointment as a certified local government in 1992. The CLG program is this partnership between local municipalities, the federal government, through the National Park Service and the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation. Since 1992 Burlington certified local government has received an excess of $240,000 in federal awards for projects totaling nearly half a million dollars it has been a success for us. At present Burlington has 16 national register historic districts, 38 individually listed resources on the national register. We have multiple property documentation umbrellas under which we're hanging context appropriate resources like worker housing corner stores and maritime resources. We have four individually listed shipwrecks which surprises most people and we have more maritime resources in the barge canal. We have six historic sites and structure surveys completed awaiting advancement. We have an amendment to the the lakeside historic district to include the Queen City cotton mill. And I can tell you of the city's approximately 10,600 buildings. We have about 4,000 that have been recognized either surveyed or identified as having national state or local significance. I've asked Jenna to put on the screen was an early project we did in 2001 to prepare design guides for the community these have been broadly disseminated and are still on our website. But this reflects the CLG's interest largely in community information and educational activities so the community can come to understand is my building historic what makes it historic, and how can I identify more research in my interest. And for this particular project, a great big shout goes to Burlington Elections Department. They were our steady companion and partner in this, Chris Burns, Jennifer Green, Bob Bolin and Katie Dory. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I wish you were present with us on this webinar. Of course we thank the National Park Service because they provided this, the seed money to do this work. And we're very grateful for them. Our early consultant was Alexis Eldred who did preliminary research and Abigail Ahern that picked up the reins from her and our professional advisory committee that included Jesse who's present with us. Catherine Lang, Rebecca Grannis, Thomas Visser, Heather Clark, Chris Burns, Bob Bolin and Brian Riley. And of course, the last stretch of this was Lauren and Ava Line, who brought it to the finish line. We're very, very grateful for the partnership and this was very much a team effort. I hope people enjoy the product. Fantastic. Thank you so much Mary. It's so great to have you here and wonderful to hear that background. Next, we will be hearing from Evelyn Killian of CX Associates who will then share key takeaways from the newly released City of Burlington Historic Buildings Path to Net Zero Energy Guide. Her presentation will include an overview of opportunities and strategies for energy efficiency in historic homes and buildings. Evelyn Killian is an architectural engineer with over 30 years of experience in commercial commissioning, project management and energy analysis. Evelyn has extensive experience in energy efficient building design and operation, commercial building energy codes, efficiency program design and implementation as well as measurement and verification of energy efficiency measures. In 2021, Evelyn developed the technical portion of Burlington's Ventilation Improvement Program in the Vermont K-12 Ventilation Program. She and her engineering team assessed 12 commercial properties in Burlington over 30 schools throughout Vermont. Evelyn has also presented at several conferences and webinars on energy efficient design, ventilation energy codes and energy modeling. So welcome, Evelyn. It's so great to have you join us. Thank you very much, Jenna. So, yes, let's talk about the technical side of this guide and I highly recommend people that own historic buildings as well as just older buildings for this guide is just really beneficial. It goes into the details of what to look out for and what are the opportunities. So we're going to highlight them here and urge you to look at the guide when you get a chance. Next slide, please. So first, let's start with some easy definition or some important and simple definitions. So the guide is for net zero. As Jenna mentioned, Burlington has a goal of being net zero by 2030 and the definition of net zero as far as buildings are concerned are that all energy used by the building comes from renewable sources. So the statement is simple. Getting there is a little more interesting. Next slide. So for Burlington, Burlington has the McNeil power plant, which is a biomass plant, which means that it burns wood. That means that in Burlington, we get our electricity solely from what is considered a renewable source. So if we electrify our buildings and remove the fossil fuel that we're consuming, then by default, our buildings will be net zero. It's just going to take some effort and that's what we're going to talk about here. Next slide, please. To do that, we need to retrofit our homes, our buildings, homes and commercial spaces, and a retrofit or an energy retrofit means modifications to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. Next slide, please. To accomplish this, there are two main components. One is weatherization, which means insulating and air sealing, so tightening up our buildings and wrapping them in insulation and electrification. As I mentioned, getting rid of any fossil fuels in Burlington specifically, most of the buildings are on natural gas. We could still have some buildings on oil, but replacing that equipment that runs off of electricity. So those are the two main parts and that's what we're going to be talking about today. I would be remiss if I didn't put in that efficient mechanical ventilation is what is an additional component that is new. We're not just replacing or making things better, but we also have to include efficient mechanical equipment. And just as a high level definition, this means that we're bringing in fresh air in a controlled manner and we're tempering the air. And I'll go into that more in a minute. Next slide, please. So as I mentioned, weatherization is absolutely key, and especially for these older buildings. Weatherization again means insulation and air sealing. And this is the hardest part of the entire project. And because these are historic buildings specifically that we're talking about, we can't just put sheathing and insulation on the outside of the building. So we have to do the work on the inside of the building. We start with doing air sealing, and that is best done with an envelope contractor that can test with a blower door and infrared camera to identify where the leakage points are. And then we can point out, okay, this detail right here, that's where you've got air coming into the building. Let's seal those air penetrations. And then increasing wall roof and foundation insulation. After we've sealed everything, we want to insulate it and make sure that we're keeping our conditioned air inside our building. So as you can imagine, this is quite an expensive and time consuming portion of this work. But it is the most critical, because if a building remains leaky and uninsulated, it's going to remain uncomfortable. And we all know buildings, whether we own them or have lived in them or just visited old buildings in Vermont are leaky and uncomfortable. They're drafty. They could have mold growing because of the air infiltration. It can have rot. So it's also a health issue that we want to make our buildings healthier and more comfortable and most energy efficient. So a weatherized building is a healthy building for both the structure and for its occupants. Next slide please. So this is the details that are in the guide. And again, I urge you to look at the guide of some things that we're looking at and some of these things I'll mention again, but it's things like, you know, installing a draft damper in your chimney. It's putting in air insulation around, as I said, in your walls and your attic. It's looking at the windows. Can you air seal around in the frame and the sill, repair anything that is maybe rotting and allowing air infiltration, and maybe put in a storm window if that works. Weather stripping, windows and doors, really important. And then there are places or times that you might want to put in solar panels for historic buildings, we ask that that the panels are away from the walkable path, and so that they don't take away from the historic presence of the building. And a couple of these things I'll go into in more detail to go ahead, Jenna for the next slide please. So then, if we've done the weatherization, the next thing we need to do is electrify as much as we can and if we can electrify everything. And so the easy thing is LED lighting, LED lighting has come a long way, it's incredibly energy efficient. It's incredibly versatile that it could have all kinds of different types of lighting all different colors all different warmth. So you can be very creative with lighting and if it's LED, it's just absolutely very efficient. The second picture in is a very interesting architectural picture, I'm sorry, of a heat pump water heater. And a heat pump is like a backwards refrigerator, if you will, it takes the building air, so sorry an air source heat pump, it takes the surrounding air, in this case, we are looking at it inside the building so it takes the surrounding air and uses that to heat the water. That is a heat pump is about three times more efficient than electric resistance so a heat pump water heater is very efficient method of heating your water. The issue with heat pumps in general and we'll talk about this also for the heating and cooling heat pumps is that they don't have a very quick recovery time. So when you use, say you're running your dishwasher and your laundry and, you know, you're bathing your kids and so there's a lot of load all of a sudden a heat pump is quite a bit slower than electric resistance in getting the water back up to temperature. And so we recommend a hybrid heat pump so that you can. Sorry, a hybrid has an electric resistance heater as a backup. So if you're running a lot of loads all at once, and the heat pump itself can't keep up the electric resistance will automatically jump in and will take care of it for that instance. And then it will go back to when the load is reduced it'll go back to just using a heat pump so we highly recommend the heat pump water heater. And then the top picture there on the right is a induction stove or induction range and people who love to cook with gas one of the reasons they love to cook with gas is that when you turn it off it's off. It's not like an electric resistance where you wait and you're still cooking, even though your intention is not to cook. An induction stove does the same thing it uses electromagnetic fields. And if you have a magnetic cook where when it makes contact and you turn it on, it turns on and it's hot and it's it boils water almost instantly it's incredible. But when you turn it off, it's also off immediately. So you have a very good cooking experience, very good, good control. And the other thing that's a real advantage is when you take that pot or pan off, you can touch the element and it's not hot. So it's a it's a really it's not a new invention it's been around for forever. They've just now come down in price enough that it makes it of interest. Then the top picture on the right is a heat pump clothes dryer. And I introduced this with its reputation because it works great. And it's very efficient and it does the same thing as I explained with the heat pump water heater that it uses the space air around it in an efficient manner to heat inside and it dries your clothes. They do again because they the recovery is not very quick. They do take about two and a half hours to dry your clothes. So we want to get away from the fossil fuel so from the gas dryers, but if you do choose to take a heat pump clothes dryer just know that is it does take a very long time. And you might if you've got that time and you're that dedicated then fantastic and otherwise an electric dryer might might be the solution. And then the bottom two pictures on the right are the two components to the indoor component and the outdoor component of a air source heat pump. And I'm sure everybody's been introduced to heat pumps. We used to use them only for cooling. And they now, especially cold climate heat pumps are very effective at heating for our climate zone. They do have to be properly sized for the loads that you have in your building. So again, weatherization is really important to do first so that you don't buy an enormously size or oversized piece of equipment. And and make sure that it's a cold climate heat pump because cold climate heat pumps can work down to and they keep getting lower but they can they can work down to about negative 15 degrees and still be very effective. Heat pumps are again very, very efficient, but they don't have the recovery rate so a heat pump water heater will will heat to about 120 degrees, whereas your furnace or your boiler heats to about 180 degrees. That means that we need to operate our set points a little differently, whereas now with a boiler or a furnace, you might set down your your nighttime temperature or daytime temperature when you're gone for the day and expect your your heating system to compensate for that quickly before you wake up or before you come home so maybe you set it down to 55 degrees at night, and in the morning you'd like to have it at 70 degrees when you wake up. Heat pumps don't do that very well. And so we need to have a shift in our methodology and and not set back at night or during the day when when we're not home, but to leave it and maybe set back just two degrees or so. So that we can handle that recovery time. So this is the mechanical ventilation portion so this is the added portion that is new is a new component to the mechanical system. So if we have tightened up our building, we are not getting the fresh air that has come in through leaks. This is great because it's a lot more comfortable this way, but we need to make sure that we take the moisture and the odors and the stale air out of the building and replace that with fresh air coming in. And so what mechanical ventilation is is basically a relatively small unit that can sit in your attic or in your basement that is a heat exchanger and quite small duct work that can go into the walls is run through the through the house. Where it takes in so it exhausts air out of the bathroom and out of the kitchen is typically where where we take it. So it takes that stale air and it runs it through a heat exchanger where there's fresh air coming in from from outside and this exhaust air coming in and it's exchanging heat. So if you have 10 degrees of cold air coming into your building and you have 72 degrees coming out of your building that 10 degrees is going to get warmed up to 55 degrees 60 degrees. And that is what's going to get piped into your building into your living spaces so into the living room into the bedrooms. And so it's tempered air it's not conditioned air but it's a heck of a lot less uncomfortable than than just having infiltration come uncontrolled. So, yeah, it's an important to to include this if you have a tightened building. Okay, next slide please. So the benefits of energy retrofits just again as a summary, you're reducing your energy costs because you've tightened up your building and you're using very efficient equipment. You're improving your thermal comforts a lot because you've reduced the air infiltration. The systems generally are much quieter. You've improved greatly improved your indoor air quality and they're both thereby improving your health of the people who are in the space, and you're reducing your structural degradation, mainly due to mold. Next slide please. The things to consider in a historic building specifically or an old building such as this behind me with with with brick is a couple of things. One, and sorry for all the verbiage but I wanted to make sure that that these points get across, because they're important addicts in historic buildings typically need ventilation it's the way that they were built, and tightening the building so so tightening the building to exclude the attic and just build a seal if you will around the living space and exclude the attic, and then installing gable or Eve or rich fence, if possible, would be a good strategy but it's something to to consider. And when you're working with a contractor, make sure that the contractor understands the nuances of a, excuse me a historic building for windows. So often we think that replacing windows is is going to make a huge difference. And for historic buildings very often we can't replace the windows, but as importantly or maybe even more importantly, it's rarely worth the investments. The windows are, you know, 20% or so of the walls wall area. So if we can seal them with weather stripping if we can repair the frames and the sill, so that there's not infiltration coming around the window. So if if you need to install storm windows. Those are the cost effective and and worthwhile items to do, replacing the windows generally is not is not worth it. And the other thing to to note is that a masonry wall is is often designed to breathe. And when if we put wall insulation, we can lock in moisture which can can create issues during the freeze cycle. And so having an envelope contractor assess to make sure that the masonry wall can handle in interior insulation and that it's installed in the manner that that can allow the building to breathe is important. And then the last is if you're going to be electrifying everything and introducing electric space heating and cooling, make sure that the electrical service is capable of these new electric loads. Again, the guide, the net zero guide is really informative in that the last section of strategies is is just really great with some pointers and explanations. Next slide please. The steps that that the guide talks about is to know your building. As Mary said no, you know what are you actually an official historic building. And if so, then there's some guidelines that that you have to follow. And, and also assess what kind of systems do you already have or the end of life, what kind of problems do you have in in your building so that you are really prepared when you do talk to a contractor or maybe a commissioning agent that is going to assess your house that that you know, or your building that you know what you have. Next slide please. And step two is evaluate the performance and this is typically with an envelope building envelope specialist that can do an energy assessment. They will check using a blower door and thermal imaging as to where the infiltration, your air leakage is, and they will assess your energy costs to to see, you know, are you really do you have a really leaky building, and you have so much potential that is going to warrant a very major investment in tightening up your building, or is your building pretty tight and maybe you only want to do portions of it maybe you only want to really take a look at the roof, or the at the attic space and and air sealing and insulating the roof might be enough to, to get you to a pretty tight building. It's really important to work with someone that that you trust that that knows what they're talking about, and determine to what level, are you going to to invest in these improvements. Next slide, and that leads to step three of establishing your goals. Are you going to net zero, are you going to electrify everything. Then, you know, maybe you do everything, but are you looking to electrify the things that are going wrong or end of life now. Are you just as step one wanting to tighten the building to make it healthy and do mechanical ventilation to make it a healthier space and down the road. The fossil fuel items components as they fail or as they just get older. So establishing your goals so that you know at the end of the project, whether you have met those goals is very important, and so that you can create a scope of work with your contractor. Next slide. And then the, the last two steps is to develop a plan, obviously, you know, what I was just mentioning over time, and, and maybe you do it in incremental steps, and working with a contractor to, to see how that's going to go. And then monitoring the performance so as with everything, especially everything in an old house, and I on what's happening in the building, you know, keep up with the repairs keep up with filter changes and such. You know when to put on the storm windows and, and just make sure that that you're maintaining the energy savings that that you've just paid for. The other thing that I want to point out is that both Burlington Electric and Vermont gas systems have incentives for a lot of this work. And it's very worthwhile to get them involved. Even even early on in and just see what kind of programs they have and what kind of help that they can give you. And last slide please. So, I do recommend that you read the guide and especially the last portion the strategies portion of the guide. And then I just want to leave you with this, this beautiful example of a historic building that, you know, getting historic buildings or old buildings here in Vermont to net zero does take extra attention and does take a lot of consideration and time and commitment. But it is possible. And the technologies that we're presenting here, they are tried and true and trusted they're not experimental they're not outrageously expensive contractors do know how to work with the building. And so this is really the time to to be looking at this with funding coming from the state and the feds and our utilities. There's attention funding and ability to really make a huge difference. It's very comfortable in the building, the building itself will be healthier, and the people will be healthier, and the building will last longer, which means that as an owner it's going to retain its value. It also reduces your maintenance costs. So we're very fortunate in Burlington to have so many beautiful buildings. And this is a way that we can work to to do our part for climate change. So we're meeting our sustainability goals and and live better in our buildings. So, thank you. Wonderful. Thank you so much Abelene that was wonderful and a great overview so so grateful to have you here with us today. And lastly be hearing from Jesse Beck, a member of the advisory board for the newly released city of Burlington historic buildings packed nets or energy guide Jesse is also an architect and principle at Freeman French Freeman architects, and which is a property owner member of the Burlington 2030 district so Jesse will share a bit with us about some of the efficiency work energy efficiency work that they've been carrying out at their historic architecture office in downtown Burlington so thank you so much Jesse for being with us today. Sure, thanks a lot Jenna. We've been in this building for quite some time. It is on Maple Street in downtown Burlington. Next to what was advanced music store and across from the beautiful handi's luncheonette, and the captain's house. So it is part of a historic walking tour of the waterfront, where people walk by and talk about the building. We've been in the building 43 years roughly, I could hear 32. And before that it was in really rough shape as a sort of a day house for juvenile delinquents at that time. Really bad shape. So the firm came in and invested in fixing it for their offices. Under 5000 square feet, which includes the two floors where we all work but it also has a full basement with the redstone foundations. We use that for our kitchen area, plotters and printers and a small conference table to have some quiet space, as well as space for our archives. We, you know, I'm part of the the energy districts committee. So we put our building into the into the pool of buildings. And in June of 2020. We had a pep done the property energy plan done, which I think CX associates did for us. And found out that the building isn't isn't too bad. It performed 51% better than baseline, which is 115. We're at about 56. And using 51% less energy. But we really wanted to take this this building further is as a demonstration project and our commitment as architects. We're also members of the American Institute of Architects who have a 2030 challenge and everything that we do. And a few years ago, we decided to put together our own internal sustainability action plan and file it with American Institute of Architects for our own offices. And I think Catherine Lang might be on she was instrumental in organizing us to put this together. Go to the next slide. So our path is pretty much fairly straightforward. One thing that ventilation was mentioned about 1516 years ago we did have someone who had respiratory problems so we installed to energy recovery units in a fresh air system into the building, which did improve the air quality within the building. The other thing I'll mention is that we had very old wood windows with metal storms that had missing parts when function we had some rot. So, one of our key ingredients is making sure the envelope is tight and insulated. And we felt the extra money to spend on windows was very important. The next list is the air sealing that was mentioned. We have that basement, which has wood sills exposed did have wood sills exposed and redstone walls. And we actually did that ourselves. Jesse Robinson Josh Cranwell to architects you're very involved in our sustainability plans. And I'll show you some pictures later. We had water problems through the stone foundations so we added gutters to the west side of the building, the alley side, which really helped us dry the building out in the basement. And window replacements. We took bids from a couple of companies that do well with historic looking windows. And we actually are almost complete one of the windows was broken in delivery. And with the delivery chain, we're waiting till February for the last window. We have all the 26 others installed. The door is old and cracked and raised panels. It's a beautiful door we've we passed and repaired it. It needs more work. Haven't achieved that yet. We have committed to converting from our hot water boiler to installing electric heat pumps. Get rid of those nasty air condit window air conditioning units and the labor of taking a minute out every year. And, you know, having a nice clean installation. So we've committed to remind energy group who are starting that December, I think it's 16th. We probably will keep our boiler for heating season to see how how we do. And then the attic it's a large wood attic that has blown in insulation. We've blown in insulation several times over the last 20 years and it probably needs a little work up there. She haven't gotten to yet. Solar we're looking at rooftop solar. But the problem there is the amount of solar exposure we can get. The amount of plug loads that we have to balance. And the fact that we may have to upgrade our roof or asphalt shingles are reaching their end of your life. So that's something we'll have to consider. And also, of course, we're looking at an EV charging station as several of us have electric vehicles. But so it could just couple of pictures. I mentioned the basement air sealing. You'll see the foam rigid foam insulation that was cut like a jigsaw puzzle to go around the Joyce around the rim Joyce underneath the basement storm window that those small windows to add insulation and then the cocking or the spray foam insulation to seal all these other areas that you can't get to. And above show you the prior windows with the Z and how those windows appeared compared to our newly installed historic windows after I know I'm looking forward to it. My desk is right up against one of those old windows and I have a frozen hand on the right and operate with my left and I'm looking forward to have both hands as well. Attic insulation. It is a vented attic cold attic. And it just shows you the ventilation air duct coming down through the ceiling in the attic that's insulated and we need some work to do up in the attic for further insulation. So that's kind of a quick rundown of our plan and some of the things we've achieved. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Jesse. That's such a great overview and appreciate the outlining of all the costs associated with the updates as well.