Posts Tagged ‘Cedar Falls’

Mark Wyatt (from left), Gina Weaver and Nikki Davidson ride down 42nd Street NE at the start of a six-mile group ride near Twin Pines Golf Course earlier this month. Riders from the city's traffic engineering division, the Bicycle Advisory Committee and police braved chilly and wet conditions to educate themselves about how to make Cedar Rapids more bicycle friendly / Jeff Raasch, The Gazette.

Rick Smith
The Gazette

The Cedar Rapids City Council will submit an application on Aug. 7 to the League of American Bicyclists in hopes of becoming Iowa’s second bicycle-friendly community.

Cedar Falls secured the distinction this year, according to the certifying organization’s Web site. 

In total, 102 communities in the United States have the bicycle-friendly status, with three, Davis, Calif., Boulder, Colo., and Portland, Ore., having the top platinum rating. Nine cities have a gold rating, 23, a silver rating, and 67, including Cedar Falls, a bronze rating.

The pursuit of the bicycle distinction is something that the council and local bicycle and trail enthusiasts have been working on for months.

Ron Griffith, a traffic engineer with the city, is heading up the city’s effort along with a new Bicycle Advisory Committee.

The city must take steps to promote bicycling by focusing on what Griffith last night called the five Es: engineering, education, encouragement, enforcement and evaluation and planning.

In tandem, as the city prepares to sell itself as worthy of bicycle-friendly status, it is in the midst of a process to create a Trails Development and Management Plan.

A special task force comprised of city and community representatives met the entire week of March 30 to begin the planning process. A key finding: The city needs to look at trails both as recreational venues and transportation assets that connect the neighborhoods and streets to parks, schools and jobs.

Griffith reported that city staff and local planners and others the last two Fridays have been out riding city streets with an eye to how they work with bicyclists.

Griffith said the city is looking to create “sharrow” lanes as part of four streets projects now under construction, 33rd Avenue SW, Council Street NE, C Avenue NE and Kirkwood Boulevard SW. The outside shared lane or sharrow might be 14 feet wide while other lanes that might typically be 12 feet wide will be 11 feet wide, he said.

Council member Justin Shields said he hoped no money would be directed away from flood relief for the bicycle initiative. Griffith noted that trails and connecting neighborhoods to them was a major focus on the city’s just completed planning process for its flood-damaged neighborhoods.

Among the lingering questions: Is a 10 foot-wide sidewalk, which is intended for pedestrians and bicycle use, a sidewalk or a trail?

2009 Gazette Communications

A greenhouse spans the south side of Bud and Jean Eason's passive solar super-insulated home in Cedar Falls / Photo courtesy the Easons

Gloria Aleff
For Gazette Special Sections

 CEDAR FALLS – Bud and Jean Eason were likely ahead of their time when they built a passive solar super-insulated home in Cedar Falls nearly 25 years ago. But they’re happy they did.

 ”It turned out to be quite wonderful,” Bud says, noting his wintertime energy bills are around $50-60 per month.

 The Easons were motivated to build a passive solar home when Bud was teaching on the subject in a physics class at Cedar Falls High School.

“I constructed two model homes-one to demonstrate areas of heat loss and the other to show ways to control airflow in a passive solar super-insulated house. We were ready to build a new home (at that time) and I decided to put my money where my mouth was,” says the now-retired teacher.

Bud and Jean Eason

The 1,500-square-foot ranch style home does not have a furnace, an air conditioner or a heat pump. It does, however, have a 55-foot solar greenhouse on the south side of the home.

The design concept is to harness the maximum amount of sun in the winter while minimizing the sun’s rays in the summer. Thermal mass walls store the sun’s radiated heat during the day, releasing it when the house cools at night.

Building one of the first passive solar homes in Cedar Falls was challenging. The couple had to find just the right lot. Design criteria required a true north-south, east-west lot. The lot could only deviate from true north by 15 degrees.

The Easons also consulted Patrick Huelman, then a professor at Iowa State University, who is now with the University of Minnesota Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering. And they traveled to Saskatchewan, Canada, to visit a homeowner who had implemented the passive solar design they were looking for: a double wall, 2×4 construction, with 10 ½ inches of fiberglass insulation on the outer walls.

During one December day this winter when the noon temperature had a wind chill reading of 19 degrees, the temperature in the Easons’ greenhouse was 80.2 degrees.

“That’s where I take my afternoon nap wearing just shorts and a T-shirt,” says Bud.

That’s also where Jean is now growing flowers from seeds and pampers a blooming Bird of Paradise. And she adds, “My cherry tomatoes are ready for picking.” 

Story courtesy: Gazette, National Engineers Week section, 2009