West Roxbury project house, before remodel. Photo by Meg Reinhardt. Click to enlarge.

We have previously noted how the wealthy New England homeowners featured in the Public Broadcasting System’s famous, long-running This Old House series, from areas which gave the large majority of their votes to the Democrats, still love them some fossil fuels. and if the previous sentence seems familiar, it should, because I used it just eight days ago.

Now, yet another house in that show has caught my attention, the 1894 Victorian in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts project, in which architect Derek Rubinoff, his wife Robyn Marder, and their two teenagers, Zach and Aria, went for a full remodel after a call to a painter revealed that the “decades-old cedar clapboards had started to rot,” meaning that the entire exterior would need to be stripped and redone.

While I couldn’t find the cost of the project, realtor.com informs us that, in June of 2023, the median home listing price was $727,000, while the median sales price was only slightly lower, at $720,000.

Noting as we have previously that the global warming climate change activists want to ban gas heating, gas ranges, gas water heaters, and all other gas appliances, to save Mother Gaia, when the series began to run on the Magnolia Network — which I like, but never should have been sold to Chip and Joanna Gaines — I paid close attention, to see if these wealthy New Englanders went along with the proposals for trashing gas appliances for electric.

And, at least in one respect, they tried a little bit. In Season 43, Episode 20 of This Old House, the show’s plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey showed us that the family added a heat pump for central air conditioning and heating when it wasn’t too cold outside, but they retained the original gas furnace for the depths of a Massachusetts winter. The kitchen tour, shown in Episode 25, appeared to show — the perspective I had was poor — that the family had opted for an electric, possibly induction, range top. The ovens, separate units on a different wall, could have been either gas or electric.

So, what did this family do? Well, they went at least half-way toward meeting the activists’ goals, by adding the heat pump to the system. But, like other New England families who could, they were smart enough to keep a newer, though still existing, natural gas furnace as at least a backup; they were not going suffer a too cold house during a New England winter!

Under Governor Maura Healey, a Democrat, there are proposals for a new statewide building code in which the use of natural gas systems could — not immediately would — be banned in new construction by municipalities, and includes the interesting, and I believe smart, provision that new home construction should be pre-wired for conversion from natural gas to electric appliances should future homeowners want to make a change, without the need for expensive rewiring. It also mandates wiring be put in place for electric automobile charging units, though it does not require that those units be installed.

Mandates? I don’t like them at all. But I do believe that these are simple and relatively inexpensive things a builder should do to increase the value of a new home

When we replaced our already-failing electric water heater with a propane one, I left the wiring in place, just in case it was ever needed in the future, though I disconnected it from the electric panel. I have also said that, were I building homes, I would include the wiring for electric car chargers, because that’s far cheaper to do during construction when the walls are open, than to retrofit such into an existing structure. I have long planned to include such wiring in my garage before I fully enclose the walls, simply to add resale value, because the breaker, wiring, and NEMA 14-50 receptacle just aren’t that expensive.

I can’t complain about the Rubinoff family and how they spent their money. They did add features to the home that would make sense for those worried about global warmingclimate change, but they also showed that they have some actual sense, in maintaining a gas hookup and heating system capable of keeping the place warm when it gets bitterly cold. Considering that they are heating their home the same way we do, a heat pump — which was already in place when we moved here, though the unit had to be replaced after being destroyed in the 2021 flood — but with a propane fireplace for backup when the power fails or it gets too cold outside for the heat pump to keep up, yeah, I believe they have acted wisely. But in wintry New England, the government should never mandate electric-only heating systems.