A woman in Illinois attempted to make her $1.1 million, Frank Lloyd Wright–designed home in Oak Park a net-zero domicile — meaning emissions neutral — and failed after having spent $800,000 and counting. (For those unfamiliar with the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, National Review‘s art critic Brian T. Allen recently provided a fabulous encomium of FLW’s design philosophy here.)
While many love the architect’s work, he was rarely concerned with anything approaching energy efficiency. Wright’s homes are nightmares to own, with their roofs existing in defiance of purpose and serving to direct as much water as possible into the structures rather than away from them. These homes are art — impractical and best left to foundations to maintain them.
Fred A. Bernstein chronicles for the Wall Street Journal:
The house had a lot going for it. It is part of a gracious neighborhood of historic residences, including Wright’s own Home and Studio.
And it was in excellent condition, thanks to its previous owner, who restored much of the original building while adding a very large kitchen and great room to the back.
Lotti describes the home as “a work of art,” but it wasn’t a very energy-efficient work of art. Its 49 single-paned windows provided little insulation. Nor was there much insulation in the walls and roof.
During a “polar vortex” in 2019, Lotti, who practices Chinese medicine in Oak Park, ran the gas-fired boiler-and-radiator heating system at full blast, and still couldn’t get the indoor temperature above 55 degrees.
Some of the expenses included:
Roof: About $55,000
Interior storm windows and other window and door restorations: $142,000
Heating and air conditioning improvements: About $300,000
Burning an astonishing sum of money and single-handedly offering patronage to the entire greater Oak Park HVAC community, Samantha Lotti’s environmentalism and its result are worth checking out here.
Net zero, even when presided over by private individuals rather than a government entity, is ruinously expensive, wasteful, and often fails to achieve the intended standards. As John Fund put it the other day when describing U.K. politics’ retreat from the subject, “the consensus behind net zero is fracturing amid the evidence that it could ruin entire economies.”