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The four-story house had been built in 1926 and the 4,000 square feet of original stucco walls were in sad condition. Cracks were plentiful as were the remains of earlier repairs. According to Chaleff, “There were splotches, discoloration and patches were evident.”

That cosmetic concern on the part of the client was what triggered the renovation, but it evolved into a heavy-duty maintenance regimen.  Ultimately, says Chaleff, whose Eastern Long Island firm has been specializing in sustainable architecture for 35 years, “The project included remediation on some of the structure, installing a proper weather barrier and drainage plane, replacing the leakiest kinds of windows you can imagine and adding flashing to insure the integrity of the structure into the future.”

New solutions in place of old fixes

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As for insulation, the building had been treated in the past with blown-in and batt fiberglass in many places (which Chaleff removed) and in other places there was no insulation at all.

Originally he had envisioned blowing damp-spray cellulose into open walls against the backs of the house’s plaster walls. But Community Environmental Center, a Queens-based non-profit that provides energy efficient retrofits to buildings in the New York Metropolitan Area, advised blowing in dry, dense-pack cellulose manufactured by FiberAmerica. The dry cellulose would not freeze in the open bays and it would provide optimal insulation once the walls were closed up.

Furthermore, if damp-spray had been applied from the exterior, the overspray would have gone into the landscape where it would have been difficult to recover for recycling and reuse.

CEC primarily uses cellulose to insulate walls from the inside. In fact, CEC has been working with both dry and damp-spray cellulose for years, finding that buildings insulated with cellulose reduce air infiltration by 25-40 percent over traditional fiberglass insulation and thus require less energy to heat and cool. In addition, cellulose does not deteriorate, retards fire (it has a Class-A noncombustible rating) and vermin can’t stand the stuff.

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But blowing cellulose into a protected space where the air is still is one thing; blowing cellulose into exterior walls that are open to the elements is quite another. In Southampton, the severe winter wind threatened to scatter the cellulose all over the place.

So the Chaleff-CEC team decided to wrap the building with what Chaleff calls “a very tough membrane, which had a reinforced scrim in it.” This permeable, translucent, polyethylene wrap allowed CEC’s cellulose installers to see and reach the cavities they were filling and the polyethylene wrap (from Par/Pac Inc.) also prevented the dry cellulose from blowing out past the line of sheathing and siding. By closing the outside of the stud cavities with a translucent wrap, holes could be made in the wrap and the dry dense-pack cellulose could be blown into each cavity and easily inspected.

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Attaching the wrap was a precise task. The plywood, which would later be re-cut and reused for the building’s sheathing, came down and CEC’s crew climbed onto scaffolding to fasten the barrier with large staples on both faces of each 2-inch by 5-3/4-inch wood stud. The wrap was first tacked to the outside edge of each stud. Then by stapling on the stud face past the outside edge by a ¼-inch or ½-inch (and stapling vertically every 1½ inches) the wrap was made taut. When CEC’s crews sprayed the dense-pack cellulose into the cavities, the cellulose did not blow out past the framing line, allowing the sheathing to be installed easily and properly.

“We used a truckload of staples,” says Chaleff. “If you look carefully at the photos, it’s clear that the staples are virtually stitched edge-to-edge.”

Once the vapor-permeable wrap for a section was in place the entire process moved swiftly. Despite the wind and cold, CEC completed the insulation in a total of five days, stopping periodically to allow Chaleff’s workers to prepare another section of wall. The majority of the cavities were 5-inches deep, but other bays were 8- to 9-inches deep. The crew installed at least 3 ½ pounds of dense-pack per cubic foot.

In with the new

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For Chaleff, the dense-pack solution was ideal. “We wanted to create a wall that was free to dry to both the interior and the exterior,” he says. “We were looking for thermal symmetry in the wall’s design and construction: the building would experience both heating and AC loads, so putting a vapor barrier on one side or the other would be wrong for half the time. Traditionally a vapor barrier is put on the inside for the heating season, which means it would be in the wrong place during the cooling season. It doesn’t matter that our cooling season is short. What is of concern is that there is a cooling season which could cause condensation within the wall cavity and result in mold, mildew and even structural damage. A vapor-permeable wall construction avoids those problems completely.”

“As far as I know,” says Chaleff, “cellulose is the only product that will give you the moisture wicking that protects and safeguards a building from leaks and moisture infiltration. Cellulose defuses the moisture throughout the entire bay, allows it to dry and keeps the moisture in the framing below the danger point of 19 percent.”

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“And that,” he adds, “was why I was adamant that we have a wall design which allows for drying and takes full advantage of cellulose’s ability to wick and diffuse free water. I will not use foam products or fiberglass in a cavity wall. Generally I don’t even build with cavity walls because cavities allow for condensation. I build all my new work with Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs). But where we have restorations or renovations, as we did in Southampton—or too small an area to warrant shipping SIPs—then the only product I will use is cellulose.”

Bonus features, such as the thorough and effective sealing of all voids and use of a 100 percent recycled and totally benign material, are the frosting on the cake. As we turn the world of building and construction around to be more in line with the principles of sustainability then use of dense-pack cellulose and its brother, damp-spray, will be major players in the solution.

Leroy Anthony
Leroy Anthony is the director for construction services for the Community Environmental Center

Every morning the trucks roll out of the garage at Community Environmental Center (CEC), and every morning Ruby Carrasquillo is sitting in one of them, heading to a work site.

Carrasquillo is a weatherization technician at CEC, a Queens-based nonprofit that brings weatherization to low-income homes and apartment buildings in the New York Metro Area. She is also a member of Local 10 of the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA), and she spends her days blowing cellulose insulation into walls, insulating pipes, weather-stripping doors or caulking windows.

Carrasquillo, in other words, is that relatively rare item still – a female construction worker in the energy efficiency industry. “The women on the CEC crews – there are three of us out of 23 weatherization technicians – do just as much work as the men,” says Carrasquillo, interviewed recently while insulating basement pipes at a job site in Brooklyn. “This is a great job for a woman, and there is nothing we can’t do.”

In recognition of her dedication to creating a more sustainable environment for all New Yorkers, the newly merged New York Jobs with Justice and Urban Agenda will honor Carrasquillo on April 29 with an inaugural Movement Builders Award. She will share the spotlight with fellow weatherization technician Irving Jackson and with their boss, Community Environmental Center’s founder and president, Richard Cherry.

Carrasquillo came to her green-collar career almost by accident.

Most of her working life, she had been in sales. But several years ago she felt that “nothing seemed to be working out. I didn’t see a career.” She was in her mid-forties, had undergone a serious operation, and her mother had died. She describes herself as being “down and out.”

An aunt brought Carrasquillo a flyer from Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW), a nonprofit founded in 1978 to bring women into high-paying construction jobs.

As Carrasquillo tells it, she had had some experience fixing up apartments – putting up sheet rock, stripping floors – and so she decided, “You know what? I’m going to do this.”

She took the entrance exam for the nontraditional employment program, was admitted to its six-week pre-apprentice training program, which prepares women for the building and construction trades. Soon after completing it and receiving a certificate, she trained with Local 10 of Laborers International and was hired at Community Environmental Center.

“What really caught me during CEC’s weatherization training,” says Carrasquillo, “was when one of the guys took a block of cellulose insulation, put a penny on it and then turned on a torch. That’s like 480 degrees. The penny turned to liquid; the insulation did not burn. A house with this insulation would not catch on fire, and the cellulose would save lives.”

Weatherization has definitely been a growth industry, even in a down economy. Established in 1976 under Title IV of the Energy Conservation and Production Act, the federal Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) has brought comfort, safety and lower fuel bills to millions of low-income homeowners and apartment dwellers around the country. Weatherization also reduces greenhouse gas emissions – a primary cause of climate change.

In the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) – better known as the stimulus bill – President Obama funneled $6.2 billion to weatherization assistance programs, opening up new jobs. Adding “green opportunities,” the Nontraditional Employment for Women graduated 500 women in 2009, and despite the rocky economy, 75 percent reportedly found work.

The stimulus money also stimulated Laborers International, which as of 2006 represented about 650,000 construction and public service workers, to see a future for its members in green jobs.

Now two years into her job and a union member, Carrasquillo is hard at work. She suits up in white Tyvek coveralls, a green Community Environmental Center sweatshirt and a mask to protect her from dust and fumes. In that Brooklyn basement, she works swiftly and cleanly: cutting black insulation tubing, wrapping pieces around brass hot-water pipes to retain heat, fitting the insulation around pipe joints and taping the seams. “Every day I accomplish something,” she says.

Alexis Greene is a New York-based author and editor. She is communications coordinator at Community Environmental Center in Long Island City, Queens.

Also see ”Gulf Oil Drilling Disaster: Gendered Layers of Impact” by Jacqui Patterson in this edition of On The Issues Magazine.

See Mary Miss in The Art Perspective, curated by Linda Stein in this edition of On The Issues Magazine.

Queens, NY—December 6—Community Environmental Center (CEC), the Queens non-profit dedicated to energy efficiency and green building solutions, was named one of 2010’s 50 Best Companies To Work For by Crain’s New York Business, announced Richard M. Cherry, CEC’s founder and president.

“CEC employees are a terrific, dedicated, hard-working group,” said Cherry, “and more than anything, they are responsible for our company’s strength. We are delighted with this recognition from Crain’s, which is one of New York’s outstanding publications.”

Cherry founded CEC in 1994 to bring weatherization to low-income homeowners and multifamily buildings in Queens and Brooklyn, help residents reduce their fuel bills and at the same time reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Currently CEC is the largest provider of weatherization services under New York State’s Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP).

Since 1994 CEC has expanded from 18 employees to over 100. It provides energy modeling and LEED consulting for new construction, and solar thermal installations for existing New York City buildings.

In 2010 CEC organized Mayor Bloomberg’s Cool Roofs Program, which painted more than 1 million square feet of New York City rooftops with a reflective white coating, to help lessen the urban “heat island” effect.

In addition to its headquarters in Long Island City, CEC has two nonprofit affiliates: Solar One, in Manhattan, which trains at-risk youth for green jobs; and Build It Green!NYC in Astoria, Queens, which salvages used construction materials and furnishings, and sells them at discount to help support Solar One’s educational programs.

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CONTACT: Alexis Greene, agreene@cecenter.org, 718-784-1444, ext. 156

Excerpt:

At Community Environmental Center (CEC) in Long Island City, Queens, we have long held that New York City’s multifamily buildings are a marvelous place for solar hot water (SHW) systems. Our latest and largest installation is a 42-panel system on Wadsworth Terrace in Northern Manhattan—NYC’s largest solar thermal system to date for a multifamily building. It serves as an excellent illustration of the ways in which the complexities of an urban multifamily solar installation can be outweighed by the significant opportunity these projects present.

In early summer 2009, two adjacent buildings operated by Lemle & Wolff, Inc. were in the first stages of a gut renovation…

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Read the rest at MikeBloomberg.com.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Chief Service Officer Diahann Billings-Burford and Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri today applied a reflective, white coating to the one millionth square foot of rooftop as a part of the NYC CoolRoofs program.

Over the past year, more than 1,500 volunteers organized by NYC Service – the Mayor’s comprehensive initiative to target more volunteers towards areas of need – and assisted by the Department of Buildings added white, reflective coating to 1 million square feet of rooftop to help reduce cooling costs, energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions. The program is one of the original initiatives of NYC Service and will help the City’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2030, a primary goal of PlaNYC, the City’s comprehensive sustainability plan. The Mayor was also joined by First Deputy Mayor Patricia E. Harris, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability David Bragdon, New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) Chairman John B. Rhea, Department of Citywide Administrative Services Acting Commissioner Donald P. Brosen, and nonprofit partners Richard Cherry, Executive Director of Community Environmental Center and Lisbeth Shepherd, Executive Director of Green City Force at the announcement on the roof of NYCHA’s Betances Development in the South Bronx, where the one million square foot of white rooftop was coated.

“Through NYC Service we are tapping into the incredible spirit of volunteerism in our city and harnessing that energy to tackle some of the challenges government can’t solve on its own and that includes reducing the city’s carbon footprint,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “By simply applying a reflective, white coating, we can reduce rooftop temperature by up to 60 degrees, which translates into reduced cooling costs and reduced carbon emissions – a primary goal of PlaNYC. I want to thank all 1,500 volunteers and 17 companies that made this program’s first year such a success.”

“New Yorkers want to help make their city more sustainable, and NYC °CoolRoofs is the perfect opportunity to do just that,” said Chief Service Officer Diahann Billings-Burford. “More than 1,500 volunteers have given their time to coat 1 million square feet of rooftop, and NYC Service will continue to leverage New York City’s assets – most notably a citizenry eager to help – to effect lasting environmental change.”

09.28.10 – 06:34 pm

Read the full article at Greenpoint Star.com.

On Friday, volunteers from Mayor Bloomberg’s NYC Service office armed with paint rollers prepared to get their hands and feet dirty as they coated the roof of Brooklyn Studios at 211 Meserole Avenue with white paint. Part of the city’s CoolRoofs program, this simple action creates a reflective surface on a roof to help reduce cooling costs, cut energy usage and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Thanking the volunteers first and foremost, Chief Service Officer Diahann Billings-Burford noted that the city is on schedule for meeting its goal to coat one million square feet of rooftop by October.

“Coating the roofs of several buildings in a neighborhood can actually lower the temperature of a street,” said Buildings Commissioner Robert LiMandri, who has teamed up with NYC Service and Community Environmental Center for the CoolRoofs program. “Tell two people what you did today; come paint a roof with us!”

Assemblyman Joseph Lentol, who grew up in the neighborhood and has been the area’s representative in the State Assembly for over three decades, recalls many other businesses coming in and leaving the area in disrepair. Lentol commended Broadway Stages, which owns Brooklyn Studios, for being a business that gives back.

“Broadway Stages cleans up the streets, hires from the neighborhood, buys from the neighborhood and gives back to the neighborhood,” he said.

Broadway Stages President Gina Argento said she is considering having the roofs of all the company’s buildings coated in the future.

“We hope to encourage other businesses in the community to participate in CoolRoofs,” said Argento. “This is a simple thing we can do right now. Together we can make a difference.”
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