The Greenest Home in Chicago – And You Can Visit!
You won’t find Chicago’s most eco-friendly home in any of its LEED-certified condominiums or even in any of its 183 neighborhoods. Instead Chicago’s greenest residential structure is located in the backyard of the Science and Industry Museum as part of the Smart Home: Green + Wired exhibit. To demonstrate how we can have more sustainable and environment-safe lives, the museum built a fully-functional 2,500-square-foot house and gardens on its grounds.
Guided tours of Smart Home reveal a truly green residence, from start to finish. Exhibit creators chose to use modular pre-fab construction, a building method that reduces waste, assembly time, and the impact on the Earth. The pre-cut lumber decreases the amount of unused material and all sawdust from the cut-site was carted to local farms to enrich planting soil, as opposed to being dumped in a landfill.
The green roof helps insulate the home from outdoor temperatures and absorbs rainwater to reduce demand on the public sewer system. The vegetable garden provides healthy, organic food to supplement the “homeowners” diet and, of course, inside the garage is the world’s greenest car – the Honda Civic Hybrid.
Advanced green technology is also utilized at Smart Home with automatic heat and lighting controls to decrease energy use and voicemail notification from indoor plants to let you know they need water (sounds like the Jetson household, doesn’t it?!) An energy monitoring system tracks consumption and offers advice on how to trim down usage, too.
That’s just a small preview of Smart Home’s ultra-green functionality. To understand the full potential of this amazing eco house, you’ve got to see it for yourself. For available tour times and tickets click here.
Posted at 12:47PM May 28, 2008 by Spencer Mason in General Comments[0]
