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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.
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Once again, no homeowner expense is too great for the city council. I’m truly shocked that Combs was the voice of reason on this. These old homes are incredibly expensive to retrofit. I can understand and encourage electrification for new construction, but not in these 80 year old homes. A simple upgrade of something could double the cost for these silly requirements.
You are being too kind to the city council with respect to new construction as California already has Title 24 which is some of the strictest and most expensive requirements in the country.
More clueless local bureaucrats — with no relevant expertise — are adding to the ever‑growing tangle of burdensome regulations that continue to drive up the cost of housing in Menlo Park. Kudos to the Mayor for voting against it!
The council (less Combs) is not “supporting” electrification. Like every other “save the world” nonsense with un-thought through consequences, they trying to ram it down everyone’s throats. It would be nice if they would stick to the actual issues facing our city and stop trying to do things that supposedly save the world but actually have zero effect. The day the city streets don’t have pot holes, we can have a balanced budget and myriad other items are addressed and fixed, is the day they should be taking up stupid things like this.
For our 1940 house, these new regulations means that any work requiring an electrical panel upgrade will never happen – it makes no sense to pay upwards of $50,000 dollars to rewire and reconfigure a house that will certainly be torn down by the next owners. The city council could have chosen to provide incentives for a la carte electrification, but chose the hammer rather than the carrot. Seems to be a trend at all levels of government these days. We’ll be replacing our gas water heater with a like unit before the 2017 state ban kicks in, and keeping our fingers crossed that it will last as long as we do.
Hey–you all are being way to harsh here. Betsy Nash and her ilk on the City Council are WAY smarter than all of us stoopid Menlo Park residents. They know what is best for us and are going to give it to us whether we want it or not, like the good little Democrat Socialists that they seem to be. As mentioned above, these actions will have ZERO effect on the climate. They will have major impacts on individual homeowners who have to replace major appliances or who want to remodel. It’s time to recall or replace Betsy and her 3 friends on the council. They are doing nothing to help solve the local problems of Menlo Park. Instead, they seem to want to virtue signal how green they are by trying to solve global warming by mandating their dictates to Menlo Park’s 33,000 residents. Vote them out!