National and local experts team up to create Cleveland EcoVillage

The 20 high-performance EcoVillage town homes represent the best in residential green building, from alternative energy to high indoor environmental quality. It was a dedicated team of designers, consultants and developers that made this project a success, they include the following:

• Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization hired Building Science Corporation as the architect for the W. 58th St. town homes. Nationally recognized for their excellence in energy conservation and building forensics, Betsy Pettit, A.I.A. and Joe Lstiburek, P.Eng., Ph.D. were leaders of the team. The design team was responsible for designing the homes and supervising construction. The end product exemplifies excellence in green design including careful attention to materials, energy efficiency, indoor air quality, waste reduction through design and recycling of materials. The design team also brought a relationship with Building America that helped provide additional resources for education and monitoring on this project.
• Nathan Yost, a healthy home expert from Columbus worked with the project design team to monitor and document the efficiency standards of the town homes. The first units were monitored. A problem with one of the HVAC units installation was found and remedied through this process and it was determined that the town homes are exceeding performance expectations (energy star plus homes)
• The project hired Kerr + Boron to create a landscape design that makes use of native plants, permaculture techniques and recycled materials. The landscape architects also worked with the community on providing ecological design consultation on the larger EcoVillage area and worked with local and national ecological landscape designers to bring the best information available to the EcoVillage project. Jeff Kerr has helped with and presented at numerous community charrettes and workshops related to the EcoVillage.
• EcoCity Cleveland hired local landscape architects, Genius Loci, to use the ecological design techniques of the town homes in the greater EcoVillage area.
• DSCDO hired local solar consultants, Advanced Distributed Generation, to help leverage $75,000 worth of donated solar equipment. The first building of town homes have thus been equipped with p.v. arrays that will provide the majority of the home's energy. The electrical current to the townhouses varies throughout the day, under different sky conditions and different times of year. Under full sun conditions at solar noon in the summer the output of the systems on units 1, 2, & 3 will be about 25 amps, Unit 4 about 10 amps.
• Additional design consultants: Hanson Design Group, Ltd. This team included Bob Kobet, AIA and Henry Hanson, AIA, ASLA. Hanson Design Group is located in Pittsburgh, PA and is known for their green building advisory work. Their team helped bring in a larger ecological design perspective to the project, working with site design considerations and landscape architectural options and participated in the charrette.
• Environmental Building News: Nadav Malin from EBN is recognized as an authority on green building materials and construction. EBN publishes a monthly journal for designers and builders, publishes green design specs and reviews materials and companies to rate their effectiveness from a building and ecological perspective. Nadav reviewed plans and materials for the EcoVillage W. 58th town homes and made suggestions on how to improve the ecological integrity. The design team and design professionals met with Nadav in a workshop setting to share ideas and lessons as relates to incorporating green building materials into the town homes.
• GreenBuilt Homes, Ltd. Jim LaRue, The HouseMender, Inc.; Philip Davis, Renovation Planners; and Carlton Rush, P.E., GreenBuilt Homes, Ltd. were subcontractors on the town homes and served an essential role in researching green building resources and materials, educating design community, working with city officials on the advancement of codes, bringing the lessons learned from this project back to the local design community and monitoring the construction process.
  

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