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The builder almost doubled the original floor plan of this 1920s cottage, reusing the old wood frame and plaster by insulating walls from the outside.
PROJECT DETAILS
> Location: Orlando, Fla.
> Builder/Designer: Greg Hardwick, Hardwick General Contracting www.hardwickgc.com


When builder Greg Hardwick first eyed this cottage property, he says he was tempted to simply tear it down and start from the ground up. But that approach wouldn’t serve his greater purpose to demonstrate how a green remodel can be done right, from demolition to final finish.


“We purchased the property with the idea of building it to the Florida Green Building Coalition standard,” Hardwick says. “The neighborhood of College Park has a lot of older, Craftsman-style duplexes, so converting the single-family home made sense. The back of the home came only to the midpoint of the lot, so we had plenty of room to add a new unit there.”


Hardwick tried to preserve and reuse as much of the old structure as possible to the point of deconstructing the old wood frame, removing nails and fasteners, and putting the pieces back to work.


“I’d say we reused 90% of the old frame,” he says. “We did get a benefit from doing it that way, which was that we never took the roof off , so we were able to re-model and keep the house dried in throughout the process; nothing got exposed to unwanted moisture.”


From the Outside In
Hardwick took a novel approach to insulating the home’s walls. He wanted to preserve the old plaster and lathe walls (and keep that material out of the landfill), so his crews stripped off the exterior siding, exposing the 2x4 wall cavities. They then sprayed expanding BioBased foam into cavities.


“We basically rebuilt the wall assembly from there,” Hardwick says. “I wanted to be very aware of water management, so we put on a special housewrap with drainage channels (GreenGuard “RainDrop”), especially on the second floor. In Florida, it’s important because we get the occasional wind-driven storm, and even with overhangs, you need extra protection against the rain.


Hardwick also replaced the roof with a light colored asphalt, and sheathed the house with fiber-cement HardiePlank. Of course, the rear half of the home was built new from the ground up. That section is a self-contained, three-bedroom unit with 2,250 square feet of space. The remodeled front of the home gained about 350 square feet, bringing it to 1,150 square feet.


To condition that space, the builder put in Carrier heat pumps. He says that despite the home’s newly tight-ened shell, he chose not to install mechanical ventilation.


“I don’t like to do those on small homes like these,” he explains, “I don’t like technology that requires ongoing maintenance and can eventually break down. In- stead, we used a standard that the Florida Solar Energy Center designed, where you bring fresh air right into your plenum. The damper, which is placed in the shade under the eaves, only opens when the air conditioning comes on, and you can program it to control when it operates.”

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