[Greenbuilding] Super-efficient school buildings

Sat Mar 21 10:09:48 CDT 2015

Some things that come to mind (in no particular order):
1) The building should not only be green, but promote green values. The kids (and local community) should understand why this is important. It is worth involving the local community in this discussion.
2) You can have super efficient design, but if folks leave doors and windows open, it's kind of pointless. Schools often leave the doors wide open a few times a day to let kids in and out. This is needs to be taken in to account. 

3) Energy recovery ventilation - due to the number of people in the building it needs to be ventilated well
4) Water related things: Rain water collection, Grey water management, Compositing toilets, Waterless urinals
5) Energy efficient lighting: LED bulbs, Avoid recessed lighting, Solar tubes
6) Thermal mass  - use building and stored water, even a swimming pool!
7) Atriums - great for letting kids play in during bad weather, and capture solar heat. Perhaps have the main entrances to the school go the an atrium
8) Promote plant based eating at the school.
~sanjay ----
If people in glass houses didn't throw stones, we'd all be living in glass houses!

      From: John Daglish <johndaglish at gmail.com>
 To: Green Building <greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org> 
 Sent: Monday, March 16, 2015 5:37 PM
 Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] Super-efficient school buildings

An example of Passivhaus schools with  timber structure and mostly eco-friendly materials from England.

2 new build primary schools by the architects Architype for the same BUDGET than a less efficient Building Regulation (low thermal performance) standard school.

http://www.passivehouse-international.org/download.php?cms=1&file=2012-01Hines_SustainMag.pdf

video présentation - very good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MffKNX5qlLw&feature=player_embedded&noredirect=1#!

Quality circle - BSRIA soft landings
http://www.bsria.co.uk/services/design/soft-landings/

The advice regarding climate, regs,etc and  oversized sports areas, oversized car parks and oversized schools is pertinan also

Regards

John Daglish
Paris, France

2015-03-16 22:11 GMT+01:00 Dan Johnson <dan at designandenergy.com>:

Good architects will know what building features to use. For a planner working with stakeholders in the early stages of a project, I believe, more importantly, transportation to/from the school is the biggest ecological issue faced by most schools. If you can slash the fuel burned for transportation, the building energy is less important; just do an OK job. It's tempting to spend a lot of time researching what lighting system to use, but the elephant is transportation. Perhaps locational efficiency and integration with existing walk/bike network & policy should absorb most of the planning budget. For example: http://www.apsva.us/Page/2240. --Dan
Dan Johnson | Design and Energy | 510.325.5672Assoc. AIA, ASHRAE, LEED AP, CEPE, CPHC | 5500 Kales Ave. Oakland California 94618
On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 1:42 PM, Rob Dickinson <robd at pobox.com> wrote:

Thanks, Jason and George, for the good ideas.
I should have mentioned earlier our location, which is in the Pacific Northwest (Eugene area of Oregon).
Rob

On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 2:05 PM, Jason Holstine <jason at amicusgreen.com> wrote:

Rob,

Some of the factors will depend on where you are, your climate, your politics, and state/local funding mechanisms available. USGBC has an entire sub-practice dedicated to schools and there are regional and national conferences just for green schools (mid-atlantic was just a couple weeks ago).  It doesn’t take much googling to find case studies and practitioners.

Certainly, a wise goal is always to minimize total energy demand, and efficient HVAC systems to best meet the forecast demand. You’ll want to maximize natural daylighting b/c it also has proven to improve student achievement. As a small case, my wife is a teacher at one of the first LEED Platinum schools, which is now Tier II (lower income), and the results are noticeable beyond the test scores (such as attention).

One of the base arguments to make—which you have your finger on—is that maximizing EE and water efficiency will reduce operating and maintenance budget factors over decades, which is critical for school systems to free expenditures towards curriculum. They’ll want to set-aside some budget for training maintenance staff on what will be new technologies to them.

HTH,

Jason Holstine

Amicus Green Building Center
“Sustain Your Space”
e: jason at amicusgreen.com
w: www.amicusgreen.com
p: 301-571-8590
tf: 866-587-9140
f:  301-571-8597

On 3/16/15 2:21 PM, "Rob Dickinson" <robd at pobox.com> wrote:

Hello all,

I am participating on a school board advisory committee considering options for building a new school in my community.  We're charged with considering and making recommendations for the general scope of the project (such as the size and # of students to plan for, the design features that we hope will be incorporated, etc.), along with considering how much money we can reasonable expect the community to support in terms of bond financing for the project. 

In addition to wanting to achieve the educational goals of this new school, I have a particular interest in seeing that any new buildings that we construct, including public buildings, be built to very high standards of energy efficiency and with sustainable materials where possible.

On the committee, I expect to be regularly raising the benefits of investing in energy efficiency up front, when the greatest gains can be had for the least dollars, relative to either spending way more for energy costs in operating the school over the course of the next 60+ years, or spending way more to retrofit in energy efficiency in later.

I'm curious if you have any particular suggestions for what the district should prioritize in terms of energy efficiency features and construction requirements.  I would think that the ordering would be roughly similar to how one prioritizes for residential construction, with a primary focus on the longest lasting components and those hardest to change later, such as the building envelope and insulation models, air tightness and ventilation system, and highly efficient heating/cooling systems, lighting fixtures, etc.  I would also think that this would be a good time to invest in renewable energy systems like solar PV, which is at a very low price point, and that a bare minimum would be to pre-wire for solar. In Oregon, I believe there is a state mandated requirement that 1.5% of a project budget be allocated towards renewable energy systems.

I would love to see the school built with a high-R-value wall system, using either a significant amount of exterior rigid foam insulation or double-stud walls, or both.  I remodeled my own house to have 9" double-stud walls filled with dense-pack cellulose and 4" of polyiso rigid foam exterior insulation, with similar (or greater R-value) assemblies under the house and in the roof.

In residential construction, I take inspiration from the Passive House standard, focusing on super insulation and very strict air tightness standards.  I think the same general principles should apply for school facilities, but I do have questions around how the ventilation requirements should differ, given the much greater human occupancy.  Obviously the ventilation rates need to provide for adequate fresh air intake, but I'm curious as to the health/wellness concerns when you frequently have many sick kids inhabiting the same space as healthy kids, and how that level of ventilation affects HRV/ERV designs and capacities and the benefits of air tightness.

I would welcome any ideas on construction of super-efficient school buildings, including:

1) construction practices
2) wall, roof, and floor assemblies
3) ventilation designs and practices
4) incorporation of renewables
5) incorporation of energy monitoring or other systems approaches to reduced energy usage

I would also appreciate any references to great projects that we should be aware of and perhaps using as models.

Best regards,

Rob Dickinson

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"I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see." — John Burroughs (1837-1921) American naturalist, writer

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