Cleveland to get furnace-free home heated by sun

Posted on by Listify Me

The Associated Press

Updated 4:52 PM Sunday, January 23, 2011

CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Museum of Natural History plans to build the first house in the lakeside city to be heated using special windows, insulation and sunlight instead of a furnace or gas line, even during chilly winters.

The traditional-looking “SmartHome Cleveland,” with a gable roof and front porch, will be built on museum grounds this summer and accompany an exhibit about climate change, the Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland reported Sunday. The house later will be moved to a permanent site nearby featuring a special foundation made of concrete and insulated Styrofoam.

“I want to bring something in that really gets people’s attention and gets them thinking differently,” the new director of the museum, Evalyn Gates, said.

The project is called a “passive house,” designed to keep itself heated using sunlight. It won’t have a furnace or a gas line, but it will have two small heating units that distribute warm air, along with a ventilator that will warm fresh air pumped into the house using heat from air being pumped out of it.

The building is designed to use 90 percent less energy than a typical house in the area, said architect Chuck Miller, a partner at Doty Miller of Bedford, which designed the home.

To the creators, it was important that the house look fairly traditional. Gates said she wanted it to look like something she’d want to live in, and Miller noted that the aesthetic appeal affects the sustainability of a home.

The project is expected to cost $525,000, but officials eventually plan to sell the three-bedroom home for $300,000 to $400,000. The Cleveland Foundation is providing a $40,000 grant and offering a $250,000 program-related investment that will be repaid with proceeds from the sale of the house.

So-called passive houses have been around since the 1970s, and a new breed are being created by architects and engineers certified by the Passive House Institute U.S. in Urbana, Ill., according to the newspaper.

In Ohio, which has six certified consultants listed by the Passive House Institute U.S., it’s a tiny but increasing industry. A builder in Akron is planning another passive house, and one in Athens is expected to be finished in July.

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Information from: The Plain Dealer, http://www.cleveland.com

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January 23, 2011 09:49 PM EST

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