Posted by Mandy Metcalf, EcoVillage Project Director 

When the Cleveland EcoVillage updated our community plan, we learned that residents wanted to see green building principles used in single family homes that a typical, moderate income neighborhood family would be able to afford. This is a challenge Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization, one of the EcoVillage’s parent organizations, is taking on through a partnership with the Cuyahoga Community Land Trust (CCLT). CCLT will retain ownership of the land while selling the fee-simple homes at an affordable price to moderate income homeowners. We have also partnered with the Cleveland Green Building Coalition’s Emerging Designers Program (advised by Jim LaRue and Bill Doty, and represented on our design team by Jim Ptacek) to design the homes. The result is a five- unit new construction project, with two-bedroom and three-bedroom designs, known as the Green Cottages. More information on the project and how to buy a cottage is available here.

In the months to come, as we build the homes, I’ll post information and pictures of our progress and of the green building methods we’ll be using.

Green Features

The green building principles we are focusing on are those that will have the most direct impact on the families who will be living in our homes: energy efficiency, healthy indoor environment, and long term durability. The green features included in the homes will be documented by certification programs, including Energy Star and Enterprise Green Communities. While we don’t plan to have the project certified under the pilot LEED for homes program, we do plan to document that we will meet the criteria for LEED. The green features of the homes, which I will describe in more depth in later postings, will include: 

• Products with low off-gassing of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including paints, sealants, doors, cabinets, countertops, and floor coverings
• An energy efficient building envelope, well insulated and air-sealed
• Heating bills projected at $36/month average
• Controlled ventilation to insure fresh indoor air
• Energy efficient HVAC system, appliances, windows, and lighting fixtures
• Water saving products, including low-flow faucets and toilets
• Native, drought tolerant landscaping, with rain barrels to capture stormwater and the opportunity for a rain garden on the three-bedroom home sites
• Recycled and recyclable content products, including flooring, carpet, and decking materials
• Advanced framing and construction waste management
• Detailed homeowners manual with maintenance tips.

The homes will have other sustainable features, too. They will be convenient to the EcoVillage Rapid stop and bus service, and will be located in a walkable neighborhood near a community garden, a city recreation center, well-regarded schools, and the shops and restaurants of the Gordon Square Arts District. The homes will include a wheelchair accessible entrance and bathroom, and a first floor master bedroom in the three bedroom version, as standard features. Options, such as chair lifts, are available to create a completely disabled-accessible house at no extra cost to a qualifying buyer.

Design Approach

The design team’s overall design approach is to apply the team’s institutional knowledge on green building – gained in part through working with the Building America program on the EcoVillage Townhomes and from working on several projects with the Cleveland Green Building Coalition – to a new project in a way that will be useful to homeowners, builders, and developers who would like to incorporate green elements into their own projects. As we plan our project, I am documenting the decisions we made and the costs and benefits of those decisions. Like others embarking on green building projects, I am learning much as we go forward with this project. I hope to share both our frustrations and our successes here on GreenCityBlueLake.

Early on we formed a design team made up of the developer, the land trust, a representative of the Emerging Designers, green building advisers, and the builder. In Civic Builders we found a partner that was willing to learn and participate in discussions of the pros and cons of various green and accessible building elements and processes for many months, and to provide us with cost elements on different options. The open ended nature of green design, together with the imperative we have meet the affordability target provided by one of our funders, the Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA), was a good fit for a design team process. We are currently in the process of finalizing green specifications that we hope will be useful for other developers in soliciting bids from builders.

Construction Methods

The experience of the team has been in traditional stick-built construction, so we have focused on greening this method of construction. There are other types of construction that offer energy efficiency, including insulated concrete forms, and structured insulated panels. We think these construction methods are worth pursuing for affordable green housing. It would be interesting to see a side-by-side comparison of the same house with the same specifications built with the different construction methods – a study we are interested in pursuing down the road.

Some Cost Issues

Although the green features of our homes do result in a small upfront added construction cost, the life-cycle cost of the homes will be significantly lower due to the green features, with significant cost savings to the homeowners. The savings on utility bills alone will quickly pay back the added cost of the green features. However, as a working principle for this affordable project it is not feasible for us to add more than 10-15% to the upfront construction cost of the homes for green features, even if they add a net benefit to the project. If we added additional costs, our target homebuyers (at 80% of median income or less) would not be able to afford to buy our homes. For example, instead of providing solar panels that would help make our homes zero net energy homes, we will only provide the conduit that will make it easy for homeowners to install solar panels in the future. We are also using vinyl siding, despite the fact that its production process is potentially harmful to workers, because it is durable and affordable. In every aspect of this project we are carefully considering how our design decisions impact affordability.

We have done an analysis of our costs that shows that the extra cost of the green features accounts for about 12% of the total construction cost. This is a higher figure than the typical added costs of green construction, which are often about 5%. Ours is a higher figure due mostly to the fact that for our small, affordable homes, every green upgrade has a big impact. Our two bedroom design is 1,225 square feet and our three bedroom design is 1,360 sq. ft. Features such as full basements and included appliances, as well as a tight urban site, accessible features, and our decision to build one house at a time based on presales, add costs to our project.

Our sales price of approximately $105,000 for the two bedroom design and approximately $125,000 for the three bedroom design is due to the affordability subsidy acquired by Cuyahoga Community Land Trust from the Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA) and the City of Cleveland. The tough reality is that construction costs continue to rise in general, making quality affordable housing more difficult to develop. We have not found alternative construction methods that currently would dramatically reduce costs for us, however, modular housing which is built off-site may be the future of green affordable housing.

Upcoming Posts

We expect to break ground this fall on the first Green Cottage, and we are currently finalizing our builder specifications and green features. The two most interesting challenges I have discovered during this process so far are the need to require a documentation process that tracks the green features implemented in the homes, and the need to discover new sources of green products in this region. There are many green building products out there which are not easily available locally, and some that are available locally that it are not easy to find out about. We were able to find some great affordable green flooring options, which I will share in an upcoming post.

Green Building Question of the Day

One decision we are still working on is, to what extent it will be feasible to incorporate FSC-certified wood, or locally sustainable sources of wood into the project? Metro Hardwoods, which makes flooring and other products from local urban trees that have to be taken down, is one such local source. I am also interested in finding good leads on sources of economically priced wood from sustainably managed forests. If you have experience with local projects that have used FSC-certified wood or other eco-friendly wood that you would like to share, post your thoughts and sources here.