Photo by James Sanna | Banker & Tradesman Staff
Rees-Larkin Development’s building something unusual in the Fort Hill/Highland Park section of Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood: An apartment building that will make more electricity than it uses.
The all-affordable, 23-unit, 4-story building at 273 Highland St. is under construction on a parcel of formerly city-owned land under a city initiative for “energy-positive” buildings that make more energy than they consume.
“We really wanted to express that. We expressed that with a big overhanging roofline – which also technically gave us more space for PVs,” said Gail Sullivan, managing principal at project architect Studio G, referring to electricity-generating solar panels.
In addition to a larger solar array, Sullivan said, the overhang helps shield the building from the most intense summer sunlight as it sits on the south slope of Fort Hill a short walk from the Jackson Square station on the MBTA’s Orange Line.
The other piece of making that design work: Getting the building as insulated as possible, and thermally insulating each unit from the other by maximizing both internal and external air-tightness, said Keihly Moore, an architect and the regenerative design coordinator at Studio G.
The building has one, 5.5-inch-thick layer of mineral wool insulation in between each stud, plus a continuous, 4-inch-thick layer between what will become a brick facade and the wooden structure. Other tactics to keep out drafts, Moore said, include gaskets around outlet boxes and extra layers of taping around windows.
Each unit has its own heating and cooling unit, while an energy-recovery unit serves each floor, bringing in fresh air.
Extra features add extra costs to any project budget, however, and the building is relying on its full-affordable status to make that pencil, said Rees-Larkin owner Jon Rudzinski.
“For a project like this, by far the most important thing would be the state and city and federal affordable housing subsidies, and we relied on them heavily,” he said.
