Showing off the 'Green'

Local developer shows off 'green' home

December 31, 2010 - Thomas McGrath wants his house to be certified as the greenest home in the Chicago housing market.

ABC7 visited the North Side property several months ago while it was still under construction to see the guts -- like tubing being installed in the ceiling so the property will have radiant heating and cooling in both the floors and overhead.



"We wanted a very even and uniform heat. There's also some efficiency in that as well, so we use less energy over the lifetime of the building," said Thomas McGrath, developer.

The bare floors have now been covered with a mixture of concrete and up to 50-percent fly ash.

"Fly ash is the left over ash from a coal fire power plant. So you burn coal to produce electricity and there's all this ash left over," McGrath said. {continued}