Retrofit Items Part 1

Nearly all residential properties sold in the City of Los Angeles must show proof of installation of four "retrofit" items.

Hot water heater tanks must be braced and strapped.

A shut-off valve must be attached to the gas meter which operates during a seismic event.

Smoke detectors must be installed in and outside bedrooms. They needn't be hardwired, the battery powered stick-up kind is permitted.

The toilets must flush with 1.6 gallons or less (though some historical properties/toilets are exempt from this requirement).

The yellow pages are filled with retrofit companies who certify toilets, bolster hot water heaters, and install the "little fireman" valve. Other cities have different/greater/lesser requirements. In the city of Berkeley, hot water heaters must also have a R-12 insulation wrap, and attics must have insulation of R-30 or greater.

Not that I'm a regulation junkie, but here's four other items I might endorse if energy savings and safety were truly the retrofit goals (for Los Angeles and environs).

1. Limitations on lawn size (already adopted by some municipalities) and sprinkler volume. What sense does it make to chuck three-gallon flush toilets and install low-flow showerheads, when boss man keeps his quarter-acre backyard looking like the greens at Augusta? Or when his sprinklers bathe the driveway and sidewalk every night?

2. A damper requirement on chimneys. Insulation and weather-stripping are commendable, but if your chimney is open, you're losing that which you gained.

3. Security bar releases. Currently, only legal bedrooms are required (in case of fire) to have an unlocking mechanism. For real? We've got households with people sleeping in dens, breakfast rooms, and on staircase landings. All window bars need to have releases, and they need to be simple enough for a child to operate.

4. Trees, trees, trees. I know I'm a tree junkie, but here's the mantra: trees and vegetation cool the air by providing shade and through evapotranspiration (the evaporation of water from leaves). According to the U.S. E.P.A., shaded walls may be 9 to 36 degrees fahrenheit cooler than the peak surface temperatures of unshaded walls. Since we seem intent on stuffing the desert Southwest with an ineradicable wave of development, this is sort of a big deal. I won't even go into the powerplant water usage or emissions thing...