"Everyone’s sick of hearing about heat pumps from me!"

Kathryn DeFehr lives at 205 Hicks Street, a 20-unit co-op in Brooklyn Heights that began the process of replacing its old, inef­fi­cient oil-burning boiler with elec­tric heat pumps in 2020. DeFehr, an archi­tect obsessed with sustain­ability, knew about Local Law 97 (LL97) before it passed, and used the new law as an oppor­tu­nity to convince her fellow co-op board members to take the leap toward installing clean energy tech. Her building’s project, taken on by VRF Solutions, qual­i­fied for $215,694 in incen­tives from New York state’s Clean Heat Program for Con Edison, and has since earned a fair amount of atten­tion — 205 Hicks St. was recently featured in Habitat and THE CITY as an example of a building moving forward with clean energy retro­fits as a direct result of LL97. Now, with the project completed, the prewar co-op is on track to avoid accruing fines due to the law through 2036, and the tenants of the building antic­i­pate that their monthly bills will go down, which offsets the cost of the loans they continue to pay off.

Skylight sat down with DeFehr in her apart­ment to discuss how she convinced her building to invest in such an ambi­tious project.

This inter­view has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Skylight: To start, will you tell us a little bit about this building, and your rela­tion­ship to it?

Kathryn DeFehr: I moved in 2001, and was on the board from the begin­ning. It’s a co-op. There are 22 units — well, two of them are combined units, so there are actu­ally 20. There’s quite a few people who have been here as long as me, or longer. The building’s about 100 years old. I think it turned co-op in the ​‘80s. That was before I moved in. 

Lots of people don’t know where to start when it comes to decar­bonizing. You guys started with the boiler project. How did you decide that was the natural first step?

We had always needed to replace our boiler, because it was over 50 years old and it still burned oil, and everyone changes to gas at some point. And then we just kind of… never got around to it.

Local Law 97 was really the impetus. It was such an expen­sive project that people prob­ably would have opted for gas, because it might have been a lot less money. But then five years ago, when LL97 passed and I read up on it, I real­ized we shouldn’t convert to gas. We needed to do a heat pump instead of another boiler. That’s how it started. 

And you knew about Local Law 97 before it even passed, right? How?
I follow all this decar­boniza­tion stuff because I’m an archi­tect who’s into sustain­ability, so I kept track of LL97 and the Climate Mobilization Act. That’s what I’m into right now. I follow the Urban Green Council and Building Energy Exchange.

And also, the rest of the world uses these [tech­nolo­gies], you know? I travel quite a bit, and I see this stuff in Europe, and I’m like, ​“Why don’t we have this here?” I mean, we’re kind of behind in a lot of ways, espe­cially with building construction.

Obviously, you’re not an HVAC engi­neer. How did you educate your­self on how to carry out the project?

As archi­tects, we work with HVAC engi­neers all the time, so we do have to know a little bit about HVAC. I mean, I’m not an expert or anything, but I constantly looked. I did a lot of research about heat pumps, and I kind of got obsessed. Everyone’s sick of hearing about heat pumps from me. 

We have the central system [for our heat pumps], as opposed to indi­vidual units. When we were talking about it with [our contractor for the project,] VRF Solutions, I kind of wanted indi­vidual units, so we each had our own per apart­ment. But they argued for this central system. And they know more than I do. So I kind of said, ​“Okay, I guess you guys know which is better.”

What was their rationale? 

We don’t have enough power in each apart­ment to run our own heat pumps, so we’d have to upgrade our elec­trical panels in every apart­ment, which would be more expen­sive. [Now,] we don’t need power in our apart­ment. That’s one argu­ment for the central­ized system. I also looked it up and appar­ently, these central­ized systems are more efficient. 

[Editor’s note: Instead of upgrading elec­tric panels in each apart­ment, Con Edison upgraded the overall building’s elec­tricity, adding about 400 amps which VRF Solutions brought through power lines into the base­ment; these power lines were then strung through the cavity of a former dumb­waiter up to the roof, where the heat pump condensers rest.]

But the one draw­back is that the building has to be either all in heating mode or all in AC mode. So in October, or the shoulder season, some people want heat and some people want AC, but we can’t do that. Usually, that’s okay, though, because there’s a defi­nite winter and a defi­nite summer.

After you did your research, how did you then educate the board about LL97 and the chal­lenge that you were facing? I think this feels partic­u­larly daunting for a lot of co-op resi­dents in partic­ular, that they have to both intro­duce the idea of new tech­nolo­gies and convince each indi­vidual share­holder to make a really big investment 

Yeah. I mean, that’s what took so long! We started four years ago and we’re just finishing. 

I sent them all sorts of arti­cles about it, and I sent them all the Local Law 97 infor­ma­tion. Not everyone was opposed; a lot of people thought it was a good idea. So I did have people on my side.

The more the rest of them got educated, the more they real­ized if we convert to gas, we’ll have to convert again to a heat pump down the road, which doesn’t make sense. And then we got these really generous incen­tives, and that pushed people over who were reluc­tant — everyone was like, ​“Well, we should take advan­tage of these incen­tives, because they might not be around if we wait.” 

There were still some people who didn’t want to do it because it was a lot of money. 

[Editor’s note: Even after the roughly $200,000 in incen­tives from the Clean Heat Program, the co-op members at 205 Hicks St. were still left with a $680,000 bill for their new heat pump system. To pay for it, they split the cost between a one-time assess­ment of $15,000 charged to each member, and a 20-year loan, to be paid back at a rate of $37,000 per year.] 

Now, every­one’s going to pay for their own heat. That’s sort of a draw­back, in a way, but also it encour­ages you to keep your ther­mo­stat lower and wear a sweater or some­thing. That’s the whole point, to conserve energy. We have people who are gone for a few months in the winter, so they don’t need any heat, and it doesn’t make sense for them to have to pay for heat that they’re not using.

It’s a whole other mindset, because people have been heating their build­ings for many years with these boilers, and it’s a real para­digm shift. Some people think this isn’t as toasty warm, because the radi­ator emanates all this heat. But do you think it’s cold in here? 

No!

I think it’s great. I set it pretty low; other people have it higher. That’s what’s great about it. You can have it as cold or warm as you want. And it’s quiet. We used to have the hissing of the radi­a­tors and the banging of the pipes. Now, you don’t even hear it.

Thinking more about your fellow co-op members, I’m wondering what the retrofit was like to live through, as a tenant of the building, and how long it took. How incon­ve­nient was it?

Oh, boy. Well, that’s the night­mare part. It took almost a whole year. They started at the begin­ning of the year and finished in November, and we’re actu­ally still not done — we don’t have the hot water heater yet, so we’re still using the boiler to heat the hot water for now.

There was a lag in there because we needed more power from ConEd, and our contractor had to install this elec­trical equip­ment in the base­ment before ConEd could come in, and appar­ently they couldn’t get the equipment. 

They did come into the apart­ments a lot. And that is the biggest obstacle, one of the biggest — besides the money that it costs, it’s also the access. People live there. 

What are the day-to-day differ­ences in living here, since the project has been completed?

It’s quiet, and you can set the temper­a­ture in each unit. Before, the heat was either on or off — you could turn your radi­ator off, I guess, but then it would get cold because you’d have no heat. It’s so nice to have that fine-tuned control in every room.

In the summer, it’s going to be central AC. That’s going to be the real gamechanger, I think, because the window AC unit was very loud, and it blocked the window. And they’re kind of inef­fi­cient. Like, our bill was super high because they’re expen­sive to run. So I’m hoping it’s going to be, like, half the cost. We haven’t lived through the summer yet, [so] I don’t know yet, we’ll see.

How would you advise others who are hesi­tant to take on building decar­boniza­tion right now?

Oh, my God. That’s a really good ques­tion. What I would say is you’re going to save money in the long run. People don’t want to do it because it costs a lot. But it’s like solar panels — you’re going to pay a lot, but then you’re going to save money in the long run. The payoff time is long-term.

Also, it’s going to increase the value of your apart­ment. People want central AC when they buy an apart­ment, they don’t want a window unit, and they’ll spend more if they have central. It’s one of the ameni­ties people want in an apart­ment. So that’s a good argu­ment for changing over.

But also, it will reduce your costs. We were paying $50,000 a year in oil, and we’re not going to have that cost anymore. The heat pumps cost less to run than the oil-burning boiler, because they’re way more effi­cient. Everyone thinks it’s going to cost more because everyone thinks elec­tricity is so expen­sive, but you’re actu­ally using much less of it. It’s not like a space heater.