Chicago Green Homes and Remodeling Guides

We're a bit late on this, but last week the mayor announced two new resources: Chicago Green Homes and a series of Green Remodeling Guides. We've been anxiously awaiting a public announcement of these resources for several months.

Chicago Green Homes (CGH) is the city's green certification program for small residential projects. The program has been up and running for about 6 months, and the technical criteria were around for more than a year before that, but this announcement is expected to raise the profile of the program. Most of the concepts are similar to LEED, but whereas LEED is fairly performance-based, requiring a certain amount of research and calculation to demonstrate compliance with each

credit, Chicago Green Homes is more prescriptive, which is easy for small projects to use. Projects can earn 1-, 2-, or 3-star certification for increasing levels of 'greenness'. Most small residential projects covered on GreenBean are seeking a CGH certification, but we've avoided discussing the program in detail until the city was ready to fully support program inquiries. Please don't deluge us with question on the program - email DOE instead.

The six green remodeling guides are intended for homeowners doing small remodeling or rehab projects, but not a total gut rehab or new construction. Each guide covers one of six topics: bath and laundry, kitchen, building envelope, painting, salvage & resuse, and hiring architects and contractors. These guides should be a great resource to the typical homeowner trying to do what they can with a small project - most people aren't doing the type of all-encompassing project we cover on GreenBean.

Comments

[H. John (The Decorating Pro) Johnsen]

It is great to see that more and more cities are getting into the environmental issue. We need more involvement with city managers and people o get this moving forward and these guide should help

[Chicago Homes]

I agree, it's great to see Chicago doing the right thing. Hopefully more cities will follow.