CDH Energy To Monitor Green Homes

SyracuseCoE Patron CDH Energy has partnered with SyracuseCoE to install monitors in all three of the innovative green homes built as part of the Near Westside Initiative. These homes are the result of the “From the Ground Up: Innovative Green Homes” competition, built in collaboration with the Near Westside Initiative, Syracuse University School of Architecture, Home HeadQuarters and SyracuseCoE, which fosters advanced thinking about design, sustainability, and cost-effective building practices for the single-family home.

These innovative homes provide a new vision for one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods and demonstrate the value of design within a disinvested and demographically diverse community. These small domestic projects wed high standards of living with advanced technology and design to encourage revitalization of the Near Westside and similar neighborhoods across the country. At the Live/Work/Home (317 Marcellus St., Syracuse), for instance, CDH Energy attached temperature and air flow sensors to the heat recovery ventilator. In the basement, they installed a dedicated gas meter, as well as sensors on the mini-boiler, the hot-water heater, and the underfloor radiant heating circuits. Data will be collected every 15 minutes and fed into an Internet database for analysis.

The monitors will collect data for a total of three years to document energy consumption. SyracuseCoE will fund the monitoring project with part of a federal appropriation it received in December 2009 through US Rep. Dan Maffei (NY-25).