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The Menlo Park City Council decided at its Aug. 12 council meeting to further encourage a transition to electric home appliances by amending the building code to add several requirements.
The city council voted 4-1 in favor of city staff’s recommendation of requiring areas be pre-wired to support future electric appliances, require heat pumps instead of air conditioners in some cases and requiring general energy efficiency upgrades in many remodels.
Adopting all three programs was the most aggressive action that was presented to council to amend the municipal code to further Menlo Park’s building electrification goal. Mayor Drew Combs, who has longstanding concerns with the potential amendments, was the sole dissenter.
Pre-wiring
The pre-wiring code change expands on a code amendment Menlo Park already approved that requires any changes to a building’s electrical box to include electrical equipment that could support electric appliances where gas appliances are already installed.
The council approved requiring electrical raceways in areas being renovated that could connect to new electric appliances if existing gas appliances are replaced.
City staff hope by requiring the installation of electrical infrastructure by gas appliances, when it comes time to replace those appliances, it will be easier for the building owner to install an electrical appliance.
Heat pumps
The city will require homeowners to install reverse-cycle heat pumps, which provide heating and cooling and are more energy efficient than traditional air conditioning, during a new construction or when replacing a traditional air conditioning unit. The heat pump will be required to be used for cooling but home owners can still use a gas system for heating.
Exceptions will be granted for projects where installing a heat pump would increase costs by more than 20 percent. Homeowners can still use air conditioning if the new air conditioning unit will be connected to air ducts that meet specific energy efficiency standards.
‘Flex path’
The city will also require any addition or alteration to a single family home that costs more than $100,000 to include at least two energy efficiency measures.
Some of the options for energy efficiency measures include adding insulation to attics and air sealing in all accessible areas of the building, adding wall insulation in some projects, adding floor insulation, adding hot water pipe insulation on exposed pipes, replacing a gas furnace and using energy efficient light bulbs.
“From my estimation, that’s a really low trigger to then add on all of these other things, especially if we’re talking about like a 1940s to early ‘50s house. There is no insulation in that stuff. If someone wants to add on a really small office, that’s going to suddenly become a much bigger project than $100,000 really quickly,” Combs said.
City staff added an exemption to the requirement so if the cost of adding the two energy efficient measures would exceed 20% of the project’s total cost, it would be exempt from the requirement.
Combs was concerned that the requirements would be time consuming for city staff to verify and difficult on home owners.
“I regularly get feedback that it is already incredibly frustrating and onerous for residents (to do remodels.) We’re going to add that now the city has to come out, and you have to show them your new light bulbs as a part of the process,” Combs said.
“My skepticism remains and as I said the previous meeting, I prefer that we provide options to incentivise residents to make what we would say is the ‘right choice’ versus regulating it,” Combs said before voting against the new measures.
Editor’s Note: This article was updated with additional information about when homeowners do not need to switch to heat pumps.
