Help This New England Church Become More Efficient

Recently, a Planet Forward member emailed me to ask how her church should become more energy efficient, especially considering their tight budget. They were inspired by the Solar Decathlon and all the ideas those young people were able to bring to a single family home -- but will those ideas work for a working congregation?

We're asking our community to weigh in and crowd-source the solution to this very common problem. Your ideas, your expertise is needed! Weigh in.

Dear Planet Forward Expert:

St. James Episcopal Church in North Salem, New York is interested in renovating its Parish Hall, a house-sized, 18th century, two story structure. The Parish Hall currently houses a nursery school and is used for a variety of Church and community events. It has a large commercial kitchen and also serves as office space for the Rector and administrative staff. It is hugely energy inefficient -- our heating oil bills are astronomical.

The Church would like to replace the existing structure with an innovative, earth-friendly, solar structure using energy efficient construction, renewable energy systems and appliances. We envision the new structure as a cultural arts center with a state of the art pre-kindergarten school. We want it to serve as a showcase for how innovative solar structures can work in the historic-minded North Eastern United States.

We also hope to inspire others in our community to do energy efficiency projects, thereby helping the Town of North Salem to significantly reduce its carbon footprint -- a goal our town has committed to on its own and as a member of the Northern Westchester Energy Action Consortium.

Unfortunately, we do not have the resources to pay for this project ourselves. The Church has less than 100 members. It is located in a small rural community, a unique phenomenon in Westchester. While the community is relatively affluent, the Church is struggling financially. Our Church leadership team believes that a project of this nature, in addition to being the right thing to do for the planet, could revitalize interest in and support for the Church.

Inspired by the Solar Decathlon project (and the Planet Forward website in general), we would like to explore the idea of finding a team of university students who would be willing and able to help us find sponsors, raise funds, design and build the new structure. We have not yet approached any universities with this idea and we are not sure whether it would qualify as a Solar Decathlon project. We are hoping you could provide us first with some guidance and advice about the soundness of the idea and the best ways to approach it.

Katherine Daniels
Junior Warden
St. James Episcopal Church

 

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Comments

[ddiazwalkerreid]

06:56 AM on 01/20/2012

Very nice project. The church needs to look at the systems that are going to provide the highest ROI(Return on investment) Lighting is the low laying fruit as far as ROI is concerned. I am sure the lighting system is highly in-efficient, there are usually utility rebates in place for upgrades. 2nd would be the HVAC system but this is a larger financial undertaking. Solar/and building envelope improvements are also necessary to accomplish the overall goal.If the church is struggling financially it needs to focus on the areas that would lower the operating expenses immediately and phase the other projects out allocating savings from new improvements to additional energy saving projects. It is a shame that the current legislation for 179d Tax Deduction does not allow non-profits to allocate the tax deduction for energy savings to private companies involved in these types of renovations. This would be a wonderful opportunity for highly profitable firm to take a large deduction while helping the community.

David Diaz
www.WalkerReid.com

[prajoshkumar]

01:13 PM on 01/11/2012

it is verry nice .

[Mary OGarbiadd]

06:28 PM on 01/08/2012

I'm not an architect, but it seems to me that a congregation of 100 should not attempt new construction. It looks like you have a lot of windows...which direction do they face? How is the insulation? HOpefully you can get solar panels..and add stuff for passive solar...a windmill would be nice if you could arrange it.

Are you renting out things like the commercial kitchen? Are there other rooms you could rent for offices?

It sounds like a great project but too small a group to me. mg