A Sag Harbor Village homeowner is seeking approval to reroof the house with a Tesla Solar Roof, but the plan may run afoul of a line in the village code that prohibits visible solar systems in the village’s historic district.
A 2016 local law amended the code to state, “Solar and alternative energy systems shall not be visible from an adjacent street or from an adjacent property.” However, to what extent that code applies to a Tesla Solar Roof, which is designed to appear like a conventional roof, is in question.
The Sag Harbor Village Historic Preservation & Architectural Review Board heard the application in November last year, and then the Zoning Board of Appeals got its first look at its February 16 meeting. If approved by both boards, it would be the second Tesla Solar Roof in Sag Harbor, following 19 Howard Street in 2019.
Anais Fernandez of Tesla Energy and homeowner Mary Ann Eddy, who chairs the village’s Harbor Committee, made the case for the application. Ms. Fernandez said the existing shingles will be removed and replaced with Tesla solar tiles, some of which will be active solar energy collectors and some that will be nonactive tiles that are cut to fit the roof. The tiles are three-times stronger than traditional composite shingles, she added.
“Once they’re installed, it looks more like a combination between a shingle and a tile. That’s what’s beautiful about these tiles,” Ms. Fernandez said. “It’s not your traditional roof-mount solar panels that are slightly lifted. This is a beautiful, seamless look to Mary Ann’s home.”
The Howard Street roof never came before the ZBA for approval. It did, however, go before the Historic Preservation & Architectural Review Board, which approved it.
“You walk down the street, it would be very difficult to differentiate that from a regular roof,” ZBA member Ham Willoughby said of the Howard Street roof. “I didn’t see any difference, aesthetically.”
ZBA Chairman Tim McGuire lives near the Howard Street house, and pointed out an issue that has arisen: “At certain times of the year, there’s an unbelievable amount of glare that comes off the roof into a neighbor’s house, so much so that they installed a window awning over their kitchen window, so that it wouldn’t interact with their life so much. And it even penetrates that awning, and they’ve made some landscaping changes to their property in an attempt to grow the trees larger so they would block that glare.”
He asked if Tesla offers the service of measuring the sun’s path and determining if any glare will affect the neighbors across the street.
Ms. Fernandez said she has not heard such complaints but agreed to look into it.
“I think the inclination from us is we certainly want to support this kind of effort,” Mr. McGuire said, “and very few people, except professionals, have a problem with the way 19 Howard Street looks. And our architectural and historic preservation board already approved Howard Street, and there’s less roof visible from the street … on Hampton Street than there is on Howard Street.”
He noted the glare is only a problem for five or six months of the year.
“I appreciate the sentiments that you all have expressed,” Ms. Eddy said. “I’m very excited about doing this, and I think we’re all trying to nudge this climate issue along as best we can in our own individual lives.”
She said she spoke with her next-door neighbors — an 86-year-old to one side and a 95-year-old on the other side — and they both approved of her plan.
Mr. McGuire noted that the neighbors may not be aware that glare could be an issue, saying, “I wouldn’t want any of those people to lose the use of a room in their house or something for five or six months of the year because of this glare.”
Mr. Willoughby said he is in favor of this, calling it the “wave of the future” and noting he expects a way to reduce glare will be found.
“This will be setting a precedent for us, and I think you hear from us that we’d like to approve it,” Ms. McGuire told Ms. Eddy. “But we don’t want to have this kind of unforeseen side effect of having approved it that there are suddenly a lot of neighbors whose lives have been disrupted in some way.”
The application was adjourned until the March 16 ZBA meeting.
It was only after the carport was completed that the building inspector realized the matter should have gone before the ZBA for approval. At the board’s February 16 meeting, the members of the ZBA — except for Scott Baker, who recused himself because of his past work for the applicant — signed off on granting variances to allow the carport to remain. While the attorney to the board, Elizabeth Vail, said the board did have the right to deny the variances, which would result in the carport having to be removed, the board members felt it would be unfair to do so, since the applicant had a building permit and acted in good faith.
Alex Kriegsman, the attorney for the applicant, explained to the ZBA that the carport was approved by the ARB under an agreement in which the homeowner agreed to put the historic portion of the original structure on the site back into place, at great expense, after a dispute.
“I know that’s a little unusual,” Mr. Kriegsman said. “Normally you have to go to the ZBA first before you go to the ARB.”
He urged the board to take into account that the ARB approved the carport after considering the impacts to the neighborhood and weighing the benefits to the homeowner.
“This got built with a permit, and everything that got built was on a survey that caused the permit to be granted,” Mr. McGuire said.
The board voted to direct Ms. Vail to write a decision in favor of the variances.
“We’ll double up on our own efforts within the village to not let this kind of thing happen again,” Mr. McGuire said. “We’ll have a new building inspector shortly and new procedures, and we’re going to have a lot of these things reviewed by an outside consultant, and hopefully, this won’t happen again.”
The owners, Kate and Alex Stone, had noted that the house is next to a village sump rather than a private residence, and asked the ZBA to allow the pool and pool equipment to be placed within 5 feet of the property line, where a 15-foot setback is normally required. In previous meetings, ZBA members expressed that they were hesitant to grant such relief, citing the precedent it would set. A revised pitch reduced the size of the pool and asked for a 10-foot setback instead of 5 feet, but the board did not warm to that either.
Another reason Mr. Stone gave for wanting to site the pool closer to the sump was to leave more room for a future septic upgrade. However, board members felt a variance for the pool was unnecessary, so one should not be granted.
“While I appreciate the arguments behind positioning the pool in a way that is furthest away from the neighbors and close to the sump area, in the end, I don’t think there’s enough justification to seek a variance on the pool setback,” board member Alex Matthiessen said.
