Commercial Street Renovation

08 Jul Commercial Street Renovation

True to its vernacular New England architectural roots, Belfast has a number of small homes dotting its hillside overlooking the bay. As a whole these buildings have a rather handsome appearance from the bay, and when you look at each individually, there’s a lot of history and many stories to tell. Belfast Maine has a certain sea-side charm that comes both with age, and also, in some cases, from lack of financial investment. Much of Belfast housing has a quaint simplicity, representing a different age and time altogether. This spring we have been working on renovating one of these charming structures. Fortunately, the building owners saw promise in the well-worn existing structure and decided to invest in it to bring this charming little home up to modern standards. We spent a fair amount of time correcting some of the long-time issues that gravity and salt air has created, by straightening and returning the building to basic structural soundness.

Additionally, we have conducted a full deep-energy retrofit on the building, removing and replacing many of the finishes and windows. We installed a new building shell to make it more comfortable and inhabitable for year-round living, while significantly improving it’s efficiency. While the 2 x 4 stud wall was able to support the gravity loads of the building, they were no match for a frigid Maine winter, given the insulation they provided. We added blown in dense pack cellulose into the existing stud bays, and then added 4 inches of extended polystyrene insulation to the exterior sheathing.     Metaphorically speaking, this approach to building insulation is like taking a windbreaker jacket and then adding a full expedition-grade down jacket on top. The benefit of adding the insulation to the exterior allows us to take the existing shell and air seal it thoroughly, further improving the efficiency. While the renovations did not bring the energy consumption for space heating down to the passive house standard, the new exterior windows, door installation and air sealing will significantly improve interior comfort of the building, as well as ensure it’s long term performance and durability.