Chicago's mayor, Richard M. Daley, has a goal: to make it the most environmentally friendly city in the United States. The city is already well-known for its efforts and achievements in greening the urban landscape and buildings, but it will take the participation of all Chicago's citizens for the city to truly achieve super-green status. One homeowner took the mayor's goal as a personal challenge and set out to prove to the community that green homes can be as beautiful and comfortable as they are energy efficient and sustainable—and that they are as viable in the Midwest's variable climate as they are in the perpetually sunny Southwest.


"The idea was to take the same amount of money—or less—than would typically be put into an average custom home in Chicago, and make it smaller, more elegant, and very sustainable," says Jonathan Boyer, AIA, principal and director of architecture at Farr Associates and the residence's chief designer.



The house definitely stands apart from others in its neighborhood, but that was the intention. "It is not a background building. We wanted to make a statement, because we think there aren't enough people who realize that a zero energy home isn't the home of the future—it is possible now," says April Hughes, Farr's project manager for the Yannell Residence.

To achieve performance and sustainabilty goals, Boyer oriented the house on its lot for passive solar, then incorporated a 10kW photovoltaic system, a solar hydronic system, and a geothermal heat pump. A plenum wall taps into the HVAC system and redistributes heated air. The photovoltaic panels are mounted atop the house's two butterfly roofs; and reflected light from the roof's surface boosts energy production. As of September 2009, five months after completion, the house had produced about 7,500 kWh of electricity—well over its design estimates. A web-enabled data logger embedded in the photovoltaic inverters tracks the house's energy production.

Despite the city's location near a seemingly abundant water source—the Great Lakes—water conservation is critical, and Yannell wanted his house to be as water-efficient as it is energy-efficient. Not only does the house use rainwater funneled from the butterfly roof to feed the landscape irrigation system, it also boasts the first residential graywater reuse system in the city. As with the rest of the house's systems and technologies, the purpose of using a graywater system wasn't to save money or earn a return on investment, but to demonstrate that graywater systems are a viable solution for residential water conservation. The plan was to reclaim waste water from the washing machine to flush the home's two toilets.

However, Chicago's residential building code doesn't allow a secondary water source or a nonpotable water source to be used for this purpose, so getting the graywater system approved by the city's regulatory committee was a challenge. The design team had to show that its solution would meet standards for potable water sources, and in doing so, it created a regulatory path that will make it easier for builders and designers to implement residential graywater systems in the future, according to Boyer.

To explore the Yannell Residence more fully, visit the owner's website. Tours for interested parties may be scheduled through the website, as well.

For more on graywater harvesting, click here.

Further reading on LEED-H, solar, net-zero energy, and passive design:

2009 Solar Decathlon Coverage

Record-Breaking LEED Home in Oregon

Massachusetts Zero Energy Challenge and the competition winners

Minding Your Meter

Net-Zero Living is Light on Sacrifice

High-Design, Low-Impact House Wins Multiple Awards

University of Nebraska Students Build Net-Zero Energy House

Passive House Design in Philadelphia