Solar, Heat Pumps & Roofing in Durham, CT

Local Home Electrification

Solar & Heat Pump Installation in Durham, Middlesex County and All Communities

Durham is a Middlesex County town with no public sewer anywhere and no plans for any. Its plan of conservation and development designates the entire town a sewer avoidance area, and the town runs a formal policy with staff soil testing and septic inspections. Water is nearly all private wells, with one small public system serving roughly two hundred customers.

That water story is unusually well documented here. The Durham Meadows Superfund site left volatile organic compounds and 1,4-dioxane in private wells around the Main Street area, and the response was a six-mile water main from Middletown connecting about 120 homes and businesses including the regional high school and the fairgrounds. Neighborhoods like Royal Oak Park, Woodland Drive and Durham Heights have separately documented well quality problems.

Durham is also the one town in this group with real design review. The Main Street Historic District is both a local district, adopted by town electors in 1973, and a National Register district, and a certificate of appropriateness with a public hearing comes before the building permit. Like-for-like material replacement is exempt, which matters on a re-roof in kind.

What Makes Durham Projects Different

• Durham's plan of conservation and development identifies all areas of the town as sewer avoidance areas and states the town has no plans to provide public sewers, so every property here is on septic.
• The Durham Center water system serves roughly two hundred customers against nearly three thousand households, which leaves the overwhelming majority of Durham homes on private wells.
• Durham's Main Street Historic District is both a local district adopted in 1973 and a National Register district, so a certificate of appropriateness with a public hearing precedes the building permit, though replacing a material in kind is exempt.
• Durham adopted two-acre minimum zoning effective January 2003 and recent development averages between 2.25 and 2.5 acres per home, with about twenty-three percent of the town still in active farmland.

Permits & Interconnection in Durham

Durham permits come from the Building and Land Use Department at 30 Town House Road, and note that the building inspector's counter hours run only Monday through Thursday mornings. Septic review is through the Connecticut River Area Health District. Main Street Historic District properties file an application for a certificate of appropriateness with the Town Clerk, and a public hearing is held before the commission deliberates.