Pursuing energy efficiency in old buildings with tiny budgets demands improvisation and creativity; that’s one reason why we think it’s an ideal environment for experimentation and discovery.  Below are some discoveries that we’ve made along the way, which might be useful in other projects: Working in large old buildings guarantees a certain number of surprises.  Often there have been many different generations of heating, cooling, and ventilation systems installed over the history of the building.  Renovations have changed the shape of the space; the whole facility may be used for a different...

Once you’ve begun to understand the patterns of usage of a building, buy one or more cheap programmable thermostats ($30 or so) and start programming a schedule for turning HVAC on and off.  You can also use programmable thermostats to set up a wider “comfort zone” where heating and cooling are not activated. We admire and have installed more complex HVAC controls, such as direct digital controls (DDC) but they are relatively expensive to install, and require experts to program and re-program.  We find programmable thermostats to be a simpler, less expensive solution in most circumstances. Next...