Tudor Revival Energy Retrofit & Glow Up
McNicholas Architects · West Hartford, CT
Overview
The new owners of this 1920’s Tudor Revival home in Connecticut sought to overhaul what was a drafty, energy- guzzling vestige of the Pre-War Era into a maximally-efficient home, without compromising aesthetics whilst also achieving acoustic perfection (i.e. silence) for their serious musical pursuits. A multi-layered passive ventilation system was devised and surgically installed in concert with a robust insulation scheme, new geothermal system, and comprehensive exterior envelope restoration. And the new interiors aren’t half bad!
American Tudor Revival houses of the early 20th Century are often charged with a certain irony. The half-timbering vernacular of the northern European buildings they emulate was toward the execution of maximally-insulated wall & roof systems. With the Industrial Revolution’s advent of the "cheap (and dirty) energy" era, boilers could easily run homes' radiant heating systems to hundreds of degrees, allowing for insulation-free walls and sieve-like attics even in northern climes. This was the case with our project house when acquired by our clients in 2020: its aesthetic “skin” being an inch of lumber and plaster applied to 2-wythe brick exterior walls, and its drafty-yet-hot unfinished attic apparently providing the most-appealing bat roost in the land. In addition to the renovation of interior spaces, finishing of attic spaces, and full restoration of the exterior, the owners' directive was a "nearly-zero" house in terms of conditioning-related energy consumption. The design team devised a customized insulation system and a 5-well geothermal-sourced heating-and-cooling scheme - along with the incorporation of a Zehnder ERV “fresh air” system - as the first layers of intervention at the house. The Clients additionally stipulated an entirely silent HVAC system; as such all aspects of equipment and airflow were analyzed, detailed, and calibrated to meet this objective. The entire exterior envelope was restored, including the expert restoration of all 200 leaded window sashes.
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