By Kevin Lavery, WKAR News
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Lansing, MI –
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A unique workshop in Lansing is combining the environment and employment. Today, about a dozen skilled tradesmen are beginning a 10-day course to learn how to restore old style wooden windows on a historic home near the city's downtown. The project is designed to give workers some valuable experience in home repair, and ultimately help homeowners reap savings on their energy bills.
AUDIO: I met Steve Stier and Eric Schertzing in a rustic 1920's era home in Lansing as a swift summer storm pounded rhythm outside big wood frame windows. Stier serves on the board of the Michigan Historic Preservation Network. He's also the project manager who'll help teach a handful of craftsmen how to bring traditional double hung wooden windows back to their original glory.
"Windows are the eyes to a home, and they really express a lot of character of the building," Stier explains. "And any time you replace those windows, they're not exactly the same."
Stier says with the proper maintenance, older windows in historic homes can be just as energy efficient as vinyl replacement windows...and cheaper.
The training program will teach workers how to weatherize older windows and make them EPA-certified in lead paint removal. And it's also meant to create jobs.
"We certainly hope that some of the men and women that go through the training will set up small businesses here in the community; that's one of the goals," says Ingham County Land Bank chairman Eric Schertzing. "We're replacing the importation of windows for an investment in labor here in the community."
In addition to providing job skills, Schertzing says the workshop also fulfills two of the land bank's key goals: preserving the aesthetic character and stabilizing the property tax base of some of the city's most historic neighborhoods.
INGELLS: WKAR's Kevin Lavery joins me now in the studio. Good morning.
LAVERY: Good morning, Melissa.
INGELLS: So, how was this program created?
LAVERY: The workshop in Lansing is modeled after three other ones that were held recently in Kalamazoo. Steve Stier is a licensed builder who specializes in traditional construction methods and materials. So, he isn't simply a board member for a statewide preservation group. He has hands-on experience in building restoration. Plus, there was some funding available in part from the federal economic stimulus package. The Ingham County Land Bank is working with the city of Lansing and the state housing development authority on this project.
INGELLS: A lot of times people with older houses have windows like this, but they tend to stick and they're hard to open, so they don't want to deal with the hassle and they go buy replacement windows.
LAVERY: That's true. Double hung windows have an upper sash and a lower sash. They're designed to move up and down in a way that creates a convection cooling system in the summer. Hot air escapes out the top and cool air draws in from the bottom. The problem is, most of the time the upper sash is painted shut. Steve Stier showed me that:
STIER: "There's a lot of paint build-up on this, and of course as the window, the sash moves up and down, there's a lot of clearance because of the paint build-up, it's deteriorated the clearances that should be maintained. And so, the windows are leaky the way they are. But they probably haven't had much maintenance or care in their whole existence. And so, we're going to give them that deferred maintenance, and they're going to be as good as new, if not better."
LAVERY: Stier says three or four generations ago, people knew how these windows worked as a system. But he says as synthetic materials became popular, we lost some of that knowledge. This program does a lot of things: it brings that knowledge base back, it restores some energy efficiency, and it also helps the county turn foreclosed homes into something with good resale value that encourages home ownership and hopefully stems the tide of abandonment in our older neighborhoods.
reWorking Michigan
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