observations03

INCONSPICUOUS UTILITIES FOR AN OLD HOUSE

Incorporating heat, electricity, and other modern utilities inconspicuously into an old house often poses major challenges. This article discusses an approach taken in a museum restoration that we undertook a few years ago.

The concerns governing restoration of a house as a museum differ from those of the "real world." Absolute literal accuracy is a paramount concern of a museum restoration; livability, when considered, is at best a secondary issue. This approach can produce buildings that superbly evoke the past, but few would be livable by present-day standards. Even so, solutions developed for museum properties can be used successfully in an inhabited old house.

A case in point is The William Pitt Tavern at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where means used to provide inconspicuous heat and electrical power are directly usable by old-house owners who want the "moderns" to intrude as little as possible.

The William Pitt Tavern was built in 1766, and became an important gathering place for the local movers and shakers, aided, no doubt, by a large third-story room that was the scene of plays, operas, and Masonic meetings. By its owner's death around 1800, competition from newer and more fashionable hostelries had set the Tavern on a long course of decline, interrupted only by an 1897 reworking that removed chimneys, stairs, and most other early elements, and recast the building into working-class tenements.

Strawbery Banke Museum's goal for restoring The William Pitt Tavern was to reproduce as accurately as possible the building's form and appearance during its builder's occupancy (1766-1797), to be an exhibit of taverns and tavern life in eighteenth-century Portsmouth. As part of that restoration, it was necessary to provide heat, lighting, switches, and power outlets. All this work was to be inconspicuous--invisible where possible.

Forced warm air was chosen for heat. It could be supplied through relatively small outlets, in contrast to the more visually obtrusive convectors and radiators that hot water heat would require. Warm air, however, requires relatively large ducts to get from the furnace to the spaces where it is needed; the first problem was how to run the air ducts through a three-story house without intruding into finished space.

Heating runs to the first story were not a problem--all ductwork could be run in the basement, and brought up through the fl;oor as needed.

Heating the topmost story could be almost as simple: Where there was sufficient space, ducts could be taken up to the attic in concealed spaces and run across the floor before dropping into the third-story rooms. In cases where there was not sufficient space in which to run vertical ducts, forced hot water could be used to carry heat from a boiler in the basement to a water-to-air heat exchanger in the attic, and from there through ducts to the rooms.

Heating the second story, however, presented a problem. Research into the building showed there to have been closets beside most fireplaces, but they were only left-over spaces between the chimneys and the walls, and were too small to contain the necessary ductwork. Furthermore, if hot water was used, there were no available spaces large enough to hold heat exchangers or fan-coil units.

Originally it had been intended to reconstruct the original chimneys--removed from the Tavern as part of the 1897 remodelling--from the bottom to the top. Given the need to heat the building "invisibly," that decision was reconsidered in favor of another solution: Restore only what could be seen of the original chimneys, and use the remainder of the space formerly occupied by brick stacks for heating ducts and other building utilities.

In the space each chimney used to occupy, we constructed a tower of pipe columns and light steel beams. Reinforced concrete platforms at each floor provided solid bases on which to build non-functioning fireplaces. Holes left in the concrete platforms accommodated heating ductwork, as well as electrical and security wiring. The exhaust from gas-fired furnaces in the basement was vented into an insulated metal flue which also ran up this space to the attic.

At the top of each tower masonry shafts represented the missing chimneys. These structures, which began at the attic floor, were made of concrete block within the attic for economy, and of brick above the roof for appearance. A working flue in one of these dummy chimneys vented the furnace exhaust. The illusion of complete chimneys in the restored building is convincing; visitors typically have to be shown the steel towers and ductwork before they believe that the chimneys are not solid masonry.

With heat distribution to the upper stories solved, the locations for air supply and return registers followed: Warm-air registers were placed in the throats of the dummy fireplaces, and cool-air return grilles were located in the closets beside them. Supply registers are invisible to everyone except a person squatting or lying on the floor. When the the building heat is off, the returns are invisible as well, concealed behind closed closet doors.

We provided two options for use during the heating season. Where they do not interfere with the use or appearance of the spaces, closet doors can simply be left open. When partly open closet doors are not acceptable, a solid door panel can be removed and a wooden grille substituted for it. These grilles are not authentic, but are reasonably inconspicuous, particularly when strategically-placed furniture screens them from visitors' view.

A good heating engineer or contractor will warn you--as ours warned us--that such a system does not meet present-day standards for heat distribution. The William Pitt Tavern installation does, however, seem to provide more uniform distribution than the systems found in many older houses, where warm air is supplied through local registers and returned through a central grille in the first-story hall.

Since we could run ducts serving the first story through the basement, there we used conventional outlet locations in the floor. To keep the heating system inconspicuous, though, the outlets and inlets were set below the finish floor at the level of the subfloor. Removable pieces of fi;nish fl;ooring cover the registers when the heating system is not in use; the only sign of their presence is an inconspicuous rectangular outline in the floor.

We took a similar approach with the electrical system. The owner wished to use the least amount of built-in lighting consistent with building-code requirements, and to provide a relatively large number of convenience outlets in each room. With the exception of a few electrified reproduction period lighting fixtures, no fixtures, switches, or outlets were to be visible within the rooms.

We had seen other installations where electrical switches were covered with wallpaper and otherwise faked into near-but-not-total invisibility, and were not impressed. Switches that have been wallpapered over leaving only the toggle protruding are initially inconspicuous enough, but quickly become unpleasantly visible as the paper becomes stained, and repeated touching wears away its design.

We wanted to do better; besides, most of the Tavern's walls were finished with whitewash, which barely adheres to smooth surfaces. The first step was to group all light switches outside of the restored space. The relatively few switches required by the built-in lighting were gathered in groups on each fl;oor and concealed in readily-accessible closets. In a house that was actually lived in, many light switches could be similarly concealed. Those that for safety reasons could not be remotely located could be placed where doors and pieces of furniture would screen them.

As with first-story heat registers, we set electrical outlets in the subfloor, and covered them with removable pieces of finish flooring. Since there was little built-in illumination, these outlets were used for portable lighting, as well as for exhibits. The Tavern was a public building; electrical code required using special-purpose outlet boxes which were significantly more expensive than those normally used in walls. Private residences should be able to use conventional outlet boxes.

To facilitate routine maintenance--we doubted that housekeepers would appreciate having to fiddle with removable pieces of flooring--we provided electrical outlets next to the heat registers inside dummy fireplaces. Smoke-alarm sensors were also placed out of sight in those fireplaces.

Heat and smoke detectors were the one type of equipment that proved impossible to hide. In order to function, these devices must be exposed. We considered trying to hide them above the ceilings, but concluded that the openings necessary to allow them to function would be visually even more intrusive than the detectors themselves.

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