When It’s Time To Take A Green Home Retrofit Project Out Of “The System”

Two years ago, a major nonprofit offered us the chance to receive a free air-to-water heat pump as part of a research study. I jumped at it. We’d owned our 1916 house for about six years, and I knew its weaknesses well. The basement failed multiple health and safety checks: radon, asbestos pipe wrap, knob-and-tube wiring, old pipes and our boiler was almost 50 years old.

The heat pump would require everything to work together according to modern standards — insulation, distribution, envelope – because the water it would send to the radiators would not as hot as traditional gas. Instead of seeing this as a problem, I thought this would be a great catalyst to knock our whole home 100 years forward. I emailed back and forth with the intake coordinator. The responses were supportive but noncommittal. Months went by. Our house was still considered a “top candidate,” but I kept hearing that it wasn’t ready.

I recognized the language, even if I didn’t name it at the time.

My great-grandfather came to this country in 1894 as a carpenter on a work contract that paid for his passage. He settled in Baltimore. After my great-grandmother died young, things unraveled. My grandfather — still a child — lost an infant sister in an accident on a busy city street while she was under his care. Not long after, he and his brother were sent away.

Because of his grades, my grandfather was taken in by a wealthy New England family and enrolled at Hotchkiss, then Yale. He crossed worlds quickly. The yearbook simply says he left Yale before the end of his junior year. Only later did I learn why. He was part of a fraternity prank that led to his suspension. Most of the others returned. He didn’t.

But the important point is when the institutions that supported him no longer wanted to work with him, he didn’t stop. Instead, he moved to Denver and played professional baseball briefly. When that didn’t work out, he reached out to a classmate. That call led to a job. That job led to his life.

Back in our basement, I eventually received the email I’d been waiting for: the study would move forward without us.

I was frustrated. I wanted to act. I felt stuck between being overprepared and underqualified — fluent in the language, but still not quite acceptable to the nonprofit’s building engineers.

Some nights, I’d sit on a bench in the basement and wonder why it mattered so much.

Then, like my grandfather, I made my own call. One of the busiest general contractors in the neighborhood called me back. He didn’t have to. He gave me a name. That name led to a demolition crew who weren’t intimidated by what could be lurking in the walls, the ceiling, or the floor of the basement.

When I came home one day, the lead guy who had gray hair and was built like a linebacker was holding up a pipe from the floor that I was worried about.

“It wasn’t connected to anything,” he said.

We still had to get through the winter with no finished basement and one working thermostat. Wires dangled. Pipes were exposed. But for the first time, I felt in charge.

Now, I understand something I didn’t then. Institutions are designed to be careful. They need readiness. They need proof. That doesn’t make them bad — but it does mean they won’t always move when you need them to.

Sometimes progress comes another way. Through a returned phone call. Through someone willing to say, we’ve seen this before — don’t worry.

That’s what finally moved our project forward.