The house at 796 Plainville Avenue is about to get 30 solar panels on its roof and two electric-vehicle chargers by its garage. On Thursday night the Unionville Historic District and Properties Commission approved all of it, unanimously, and nobody in the room objected to how any of it would look.
A historic district's authority is over appearance: the parts of a property a neighbor can see from the street, and not much else. Unionville's commission used that authority to approve the panels, not to block them. What it looked at was firefighter access and building code, and once those checked out, the certificate of appropriateness passed on a voice vote.
Thirty panels, two chargers, and a path for the fire department
The application came from the property owner, Catherine Daly, and was presented by a project manager for Skyline Solar, the installer. The system is 30 panels rated at 430 watts each, 12.9 kilowatts in total, sized to the household's electricity use and its two electric vehicles. The panels go on the south-facing roofs, which the installer called the most productive exposure, and cover roughly 20 percent of the roof area. The two chargers go on the side of the house near the garage.
Most of the presentation was about safety rather than savings. The array is grid-tied, with an automatic shutoff that disconnects it during a power outage so it cannot push electricity back into a line a utility crew might be working on; it then waits five minutes of steady current before switching back on. An exterior disconnect sits by the meter on the porch, within reach of both emergency crews and the homeowner. Along the roof ridge, the panels are set back 18 inches on each side, leaving a three-foot channel so firefighters can still get onto the roof.
The commission had almost no questions. The panels will be visible from Plainville Avenue, a point Garrett Daigle, the assistant town planner who staffs the commission, raised himself: the lots along that stretch are cleared, the wetlands keep the sightlines open, and there is nowhere else on the house to put the array without giving up output. No one treated that visibility as a reason to vote no. The town building department had already reviewed the engineering and issued its permit, the installer noted. "There's no objections," Chair Lisa Johnson said, and called the question. It carried with no dissent and no abstentions.
Is it even Unionville?
The one genuine wrinkle of the night was geographic. The mailing address is 796 Plainville Avenue, Unionville, but the property, known in the district's records as the Asa Hawley House, sits physically in Farmington.
Commission member Ann Vibert raised it before the vote. "All the paperwork says this is Unionville," she said. "This is really Farmington and not Unionville." The house is in the Unionville Historic District by arrangement rather than geography, Johnson explained: Farmington's own historic district did not want to include it, the owners wanted to be in one, and so it came to Unionville. Vibert's concern was practical. "For legality purposes," she asked, "should you change the address on the paperwork to include Farmington and not Unionville?" The commission agreed the documents should say Farmington.
It is the kind of small thing that comes with running two historic districts in one town, and occasionally having to settle whose house is whose.
A recruitment list that has sat since 2018
With the hearing closed, the commission turned to the slower work that fills most of its meetings, the agenda it laid out as five priorities for the year this spring.
The district holds 41 buildings and properties, Johnson said, and has not run a recruitment effort in several years. She has a target list of candidate properties dating to 2018, some of which have joined the district in the meantime anyway, and plans to retype it and hand it back to members to work through. "Sometimes it just takes a few years to convince people," she said.
The oral-history program, which the commission launched last year, had its list of prospective interview subjects passed out so members can start making calls. Secretary Barbara Marsh is developing a "Churches of Unionville" walking tour, timed around the tours the Unionville Museum already runs so the two do not land on the same weekend; she expects to bring a proposal to the August meeting.
Johnson also settled a chore she had been meaning to get to. She found an hour-and-twenty-two-minute training video produced by the State Historic Preservation Office and the Connecticut Preservation Trust, which she plans to circulate and then work through in a dedicated session in September. Members can watch it at home first. "I don't think it's that stimulating," she said. "But it's good."
What's next
There is no July meeting; the commission rarely holds one, and the date would have landed against the Fourth of July weekend. The next session is in August, when Daigle expects one or two new applications: a sign for the church, and a replacement sign for the Unionville Museum. Further out, the United Methodist Church reaches its 100th anniversary on November 22, which Daigle noted is a little cold for a walking tour.
This coverage is supported by Farmington Storage, 155 Scott Swamp Road, the only storage facility in Connecticut with Museum air. A historic district spends its evenings deciding what is worth keeping and how to keep it intact. Farmington Storage works the same problem at a smaller scale, holding the climate steady for whatever you have decided is worth preserving. 860.777.4001 📦
— Jack Beckett has covered Farmington's land-use boards long enough to know that a quiet meeting is still a meeting worth reading. He is on his second cup of coffee and has read the entire certificate of appropriateness. You're welcome. ☕
*The Farmington Mercury covers the town nobody else is covering: the historic-district hearing that runs fifteen minutes, the police log you would never find on your own, the zoning fight that decides what gets built next door. We publish slowly and on purpose. By the time we arrive, the vote is counted and the facts are checked. Find us at farmingtonmercury.com and tell your neighbors. #WeAreFarmington 📰