A single family home in Glencoe, Illinois recently received the LEED Platinum for Home certification. This 4,800-square-foot house is the first new home in the North Shore area of Chicago to receive this rating. Despite its many green and sustainable features, the residence looks like a traditional house from the outside. The home also boasts of a HERS rating of 32.
The home was designed by the Kipnis Architecture and Planning firm and built by the contractor firm Scott Simpson Builders. The building costs were the same as for a same-sized non-green home, while the owners also wanted a green home that would not differ from the rest of the homes in the neighborhood in its appearance, so as to prove that a classic design and sustainability can go hand in hand.
The residence features a standing seam metal roof, which was one of the key elements in making this home sustainable. The roof of the home is comprised of 600 square feet of 24 gauge PAC-CLAD material supplied by Petersen Aluminum, which was fabricated and installed by the Cedar Roofing Company. The coating applied to the roof is the Energy Star approved Silver Metallic Kynar 500, which has high reflectivity and Solar Reflectance Index (SRI) ratings. The PAC-CLAD steel and aluminum is also constructed from a high percentage of recycled materials and the roof is itself 100-percent recyclable at the end of its lifetime.
To add to the sustainable design, the roof shape is also arranged so as to collect as much rainwater as possible. For this purpose the roof is sloped at two different angles, namely the summer angle and the winter angle. The south-facing side has a steeper angle and is fitted with the solar thermal panels, which is a set-up optimized for the winter when the area does not get a lot of sunshine.
The solar PV panels on the south side of the roof also have the electrical production maximized for the middle of the day in the summer as a CO2 reduction strategy. The roof also has a ventilation tower incorporated into its design, which includes transom windows that provide airflow to the upstairs when the lower windows are open.
Among other sustainable features of the house are radiant floor heating, cement fiberboard siding, natural daylighting, passive whole-house ventilation, and a rain barrel water collection system. The walls have an insulation rating of R-40, achieved via closed-cell foam insulation, while the roof has a rating of R-55. The home also features an integrated, app-controlled ultra-high efficiency HVAC system.
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