Heat pumps transform former factory lofts into a temperature-controlled oasis

The International Tailoring Company Building, a 13-story resi­den­tial co-op so named for its previous indus­trial life as a men’s suiting factory, sits at 111 4th Ave., just a stone’s throw from Union Square. With high ceil­ings and tall windows gleaming like a giant fish tank, the Manhattan lofts appear at first glance to be a spacious, modern building, offering comfort­able living with apart­ments bathed in natural light. But the resi­dent share­holders know better.

Comfortable and modern the building was not. Built in 1920, 111 4th Ave. still regu­lated its heating and cooling with tech­nology from that era: A two-pipe hydronic system, which used hot or cold water to regu­late temper­a­tures. Under this two-pipe system, the entire building remained in either heating or cooling mode, preventing resi­dents from control­ling the temper­a­ture in their apartments. 

“You end up with the sunny apart­ments being green­houses, and the not-sunny apart­ments being cold on colder days,” said Eric Einstein, co-op board president. 

The co-op owner-resi­dents put up with these constant incon­ve­niences for years until 2017, when one compo­nent of the HVAC system, the absorp­tion chillers, was nearing the end of its useful life and needed replace­ment. The board took advan­tage of this situ­a­tion to modernize the entire system. 

A restau­ran­teur by trade, Eric Einstein didn’t have the slightest back­ground in HVAC engi­neering. But as board pres­i­dent, he never­the­less fell down the rabbit hole looking for the best tech­nology to replace the building’s heating and cooling system to present to the board. What started as a quest for comfort would also come to help the building comply with Local Law 97 (LL97), the carbon emis­sions reduc­tion law that came into effect in 2019, two years before the contract to start the building’s reno­va­tion was signed. 

The Challenge

The road to success was laden with trial and error. Einstein quickly real­ized that despite all the guid­ance out there about energy effi­ciency retro­fits, there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to clean energy tech­nology — he had to find the right system to meet the needs and constraints of his building.

Early on in his research odyssey, Einstein stum­bled upon geot­hermal heating, a tech­nology that harnesses the earth’s under­ground temper­a­ture to transfer heat, instead of a gas-powered system. This seemed like a good fit at first. Yet finding a knowl­edge­able contractor or engi­neer who could give him recom­men­da­tions turned into a major hassle. 

“You need someone who can work with your budget and your existing tech­nology. So you need someone who has both finan­cial savvy and tech­nical savvy,” he said. 

After months of setbacks and frus­tra­tion, he finally found answers in Ecosystem, an engi­neering and construc­tion firm with offices across the U.S. and Canada that special­izes in improving energy systems in existing buildings. 

The Roadmap

As soon as Ecosystem repre­sen­ta­tives met with Einstein and eval­u­ated the building, they told him his idea of geot­hermal wasn’t feasible. 111 4th Ave.’s orig­inal design couldn’t support geot­hermal energy, as its old fan coils weren’t equipped to handle lower temperatures. 

Instead, Ben Milbank, senior project devel­op­ment engi­neer at Ecosystem who worked with Einstein on the project, explained that they could repur­pose the existing water-based system for a thermal network, a system that recovers and reuses energy to effi­ciently heat and cool the building, instead of drawing it from under­ground. Einstein presented this plan to the rest of the board, and everyone agreed it was the right direc­tion to take. 

Ecosystem planned to replace the fan coils in each unit that emitted hot or cold air with hybrid water-source heat pump units that would provide both heating and cooling all year round. They also planned to give resi­dents an Ecobee ther­mo­stat to regu­late their apartment’s temper­a­tures at will. 

“I was so excited. I was ready to volun­teer to be a sample apart­ment if they needed it,” said Deborah Kadetsky, previous board member. She’d been living at 111 4th Ave. since 2006, and temper­a­tures in her apart­ment could rise alarm­ingly high. ​“I was on a Zoom call, and all of a sudden my smoke alarm started going off. I panicked, and I real­ized it was because of the way the sun and the heat of the apart­ment was hitting it,” she recalls. 

The reno­va­tions would require an invest­ment of a whop­ping $9.3 million. Fortunately, the board of the International Tailoring Company Building had been preparing for over five years for such a big renovation. 

In 2013, when Einstein took over as co-op board trea­surer, the board had a list of all of the systems that would need to be refur­bished, including the eleva­tors, side­walks, plumbing, and HVAC system. Einstein and the board preferred to prepare for these inevitable expenses, rather than wait for disaster to strike, so they imple­mented a three percent annual increase to share­holders’ main­te­nance fee. This helped them build a big cushion of savings by the time they signed the contract with Ecosystem in 2021. 

“If you’re spending money reac­tively, you’re just going to be throwing money down the drain,” said Milbank.

By then, LL97 had passed, and the thermal network project qual­i­fied to receive finan­cial incen­tives for its development.

Originally, Ecosystem had planned to install new gas boilers to power the entire system and tackle decar­boniza­tion down the road; however, if they went in that direc­tion, they would risk fines for exceeding emis­sion stan­dards set by the new law. So, instead, Ecosystem recom­mended they install a series of elec­tric heat pumps on the roof, using only two new gas boilers to supple­ment the heat pumps during the coldest days. 

By choosing this pathway, they secured a handful of incen­tives from NYSERDA and Con Edison, and qual­i­fied for an Inflation Reduction Act Thermal Storage tax credit for thermal storage that helped them fund the project, reducing costs by $3.28 million. In the end, they paid $6 million out of pocket. 

The Project

After a very metic­u­lous back and forth between the Ecosystem and Einstein, who took his time to research the tech­nical specifics to make sure the project would fit the building’s needs, the construc­tion work started in May of 2022. 

The work comprised three phases that ran almost simul­ta­ne­ously: While one team worked on replacing the boilers and all the mechan­ical systems in the base­ment, another would replace the systems in each of the apart­ments, and a third team would install the heat pumps on the roof. 

While some share­holders chose to leave during the week-long reno­va­tion process in their indi­vidual apart­ments, others stayed to face the mess. The board, in part­ner­ship with the prop­erty manage­ment firm AKAM, made sure that everyone knew about the project with ample time in case they wanted to stay else­where, but they also made sure that the construc­tion crew found ways to work without needing to kick people out, protecting the apart­ments with plastic when necessary. 

By June 2023, the reno­va­tion was done, leaving resi­dents with complete control of temper­a­tures in their apartments. 

Now during hot seasons, Kadetsky says, she turns off the AC when she leaves, and just as she’s riding the train home she turns it on again remotely via mobile app, so she can arrive at a cooled-down apart­ment. ​“It’s wildly upgraded from what we had in the past,” she said. 

Still, she wishes someone had given her and the rest of the co-op resi­dents a complete tuto­rial on how the new ther­mostats work. ​“From my perspec­tive, there wasn’t a lot of proac­tive infor­ma­tion about what this ther­mo­stat is, how it works, or how to change your settings,” she said. 

It is unclear exactly how much the building will save in carbon emis­sions because of the new system, but the engi­neers project it will save up to 80 percent of onsite emis­sions, which posi­tions the building to comply with LL97’s goal of reducing green­house gas emis­sions by 40 percent by 2030. 

The building is not fully weaned off of carbon-based energy, as it still has gas boilers to supple­ment the heat pumps. But the mix of energy has shifted greatly towards elec­tricity, and the building overall uses less energy to heat and cool apart­ments, because the elec­tric heat pumps are more effi­cient than the previous fossil fuel-powered systems.

This project is an example of ​“hybrid elec­tri­fi­ca­tion,” according to Stephanie Schwartz, director of marketing commu­ni­ca­tions for Ecosystem. She says one big take­away from 111 4th Ave.’s retro­fitting is that build­ings don’t neces­sarily have to elim­i­nate every­thing that emits carbon to meet decar­boniza­tion goals. 

The International Tailoring Company Building is a work in progress. Residents will be respon­sible for replacing their old windows, which some­times have prob­lems opening and closing, and the board will soon begin reno­va­tions to the roof. 

Yet overall, resi­dents feel proud of all the work they put into the building. For his part, Einstein doesn’t regret a second of the hours he spent researching. ​“Don’t be afraid of starting some­where and asking ques­tions,” he said. ​“Even if you run into a bunch of walls at first, even­tu­ally, hope­fully, you come to some­thing that will work.”