Bill Worn, of Worn Jerabek Architects, recently gave us the lowdown on the inner workings of Kedzie GreenLife. As we mentioned recently, Terra Firma and Bethel New Life are planning the eco-friendly project for a site at 3148 W Lake St, directly north of the Kedzie station on the Green Line in East Garfield Park. The goal is to heat and cool the building through “passive energy,” Worn said.
Southern exposure is key to the building’s energy efficiency. All of the 30 units face south, allowing them to soak up the warm rays. Each of the five residential levels is set back from the one below in a tiered design that ensures all the units get plenty of light, he said.
In the rendering we’ve got here, you can see colorful squares in front of the windows. Those are sun-shades made of a synthetic fabric. How residents use the sun shades will affect the temperature in their units. For example, in the winter, they’ll leave the shades open during the day, allowing the sun to sink into the concrete floor of a sun porch (“It’s like your grandmother’s old porch, an unheated space with windows on both sides,” Worn said). At night, residents will pull the shades and open transom windows in between the units and the porches, allowing heat stored in the concrete floors to filter into the homes.
The north side of the building will be occupied by hallways – a way to buffer the homes from the north wind. But Worn wanted the units to have windows on the north side for cooling and ventilation. His solution: the north wall of each unit stops just shy of the ceiling. In between is a sort of crawl space that cuts through to the building’s north wall. “I have no doubt that if I was a kid I would hang out up there,” Worn said.
Opening a north-facing window and a southern-facing transom will suck cool air through the unit, he said.
Another major green feature, besides a wind turbine that will power the signs for the commercial spaces, is solar panels that will heat the building’s water supply. Each unit has a balcony with a black, glass-covered panel affixed to the railing. These are designed to produce heat under sunlight. A substance very much like antifreeze fills a hose that runs through the panels. When that substance gets hot, it rises to a convection loop that circulates through the hot-water heater. Worn said this system will heat 85 percent of the building’s water, with the remaining 15 percent heated by natural gas.
The builders will seek LEED Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for the project, according to Brad Leibov, principal in Terra Firma. Half of the units will be set aside as affordable housing, he said.