As many colleges are located in areas where droughts and water shortages are front-page news, improved water efficiency is a major concern.
When Rachel Gutter, senior manager of the education sector of the US Green Building Council, was in college, she remembers the dorm she lived in to have mold growing in the bathrooms, old carpeting, and dangerous chemicals in the paint. In other words, her dorm was like most dorm buildings across the country: an unhealthy building. Except, we didn’t know (or care) too much about unhealthy buildings until recently.
College and universities have always been at the cutting edge of technologies and research, so it is not a surprise to see more institutions of higher education moving toward sustainable building practices.
“A lot of colleges have adopted Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) as the new standard,” says Joe Greco, a principal with Lord, Aeck & Sargent Architecture. “Many are targeting for silver certification. These buildings mean better energy performance and water efficiency, as well as a healthier building.”
Unlike commercial organizations, college campuses have a variety of building types—classrooms, research labs, gymnasiums, residence halls, and dining facilities. Residence halls and other buildings that house students for prolonged hours and provide some of the comforts of home, like showers and eating facilities, have additional considerations than other buildings, particularly with increased water and energy use.
As many colleges are located in areas where droughts and water shortages are front-page news, not to mention, as water conservation becomes a nationwide topic, improved water efficiency is a major concern. Low-flow showerheads, aerators on faucets, and low-flush toilets are becoming standard equipment in new and renovated buildings on most campuses. An increasing number of schools are turning to native landscaping and improved irrigation systems. However, water is also saved when energy is saved.
“The process of generating electricity uses a tremendous amount of water,” says Greco.
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Photo: Jim Gaston
The 6,000-square-foot “Smart Home” at Duke University is a reimagining of sustainable campus irrigation. |
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Photo: Jim Gaston
At the Duke “Smart Home,” two 1,000-gallon rainwater cisterns provide water for irrigation and restrooms. |
According to the Southern States Energy Board, three gallons of water is used to produce a kilowatt-hour of electricity. The more a building can save electric energy, the more water is conserved.
Gutter sees another benefit to the increased focus on sustainable building on college campuses. The students on these campuses, she says, are the future leaders of the country and attending a college that focuses on green building and green living drives home the importance of the lifestyle. Plus, she adds, they are much healthier students. “A lot of people think of the impact green building has on the Earth or on energy efficiency, but there is a real impact on human health,” she says.
LEED-certified buildings have better indoor air quality, especially important with the transient population found on college campuses.
As it turns out, having a strong record of sustainable building and living practices is important to students even before they step on campus. According to a survey by the Princeton Review, 68% of potential students look at a school’s sustainability record when making their decision.
Since many college building projects come via taxpayer dollars or through alumni donations, the concern for cost efficiency could put sustainability on the back burner. However, both Greco and Gutter stress that building green doesn’t have to be cost-prohibitive.
“Yes, it is easier to make a new building a green building, but you don’t have to build a whole new dorm,” says Gutter.
It’s a matter of small steps—improving the plumbing systems or using low VOC paints or using green cleaning services.
Greco adds that many of the options to earn LEED certification points have no extra cost. “True, not all LEED points cost the same,” he says. “Equipment that reduces energy costs have a payback, but there are a lot of things have that no impact in cost. In fact, we believe a silver building can be done for virtually no extra cost. Motion sensors on lighting and low-flow fixtures are either mandatory or don’t have much of a premium on them.”
He says that colleges and universities tend to be farther looking than other types of organizations and companies when it comes to building, which makes them more open to the upfront costs of green building. Campus buildings are usually meant to last for several generations, after all.
Another focus for water conservation is through landscaping. At Texas A&M University (TAMU), drip irrigation systems and native plants that use less water are the first step.
“We’ll do everything we can to get the LEED points needed to reach our goal,” says Ron Sasse, director of residence life at TAMU. “But so much of that is site-dependent or project-dependent on what you do and what you don’t do.”
As Gutter points out, today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders, and living on a sustainable campus can encourage them to take these practices out into the world at large. She also adds that these same students will also be creating jobs in the sustainable living sector. Living and learning in green buildings can be part of the overall education process.
Students in Duke University’s Pratt College of Engineering partnered with The Home Depot to design a “smart home,” which may be the penultimate in sustainable residential housing on a college campus. The 6,000-square-foot home, which opened in January 2008, features a variety of eco-friendly and high-tech elements and is home to 10 students. The students who live in this building participate in research projects geared toward eco-friendly living practices, such as improving the hot water system, air quality, energy systems, environmentally friendly backup power generation, and composting.
Some of the Smart Home’s features include:
- A green roof comprised of living plants that will insulate the home from the cold of winter and the heat of summer. The roof’s soil also pre-filters water that passes through it, removing
pollutants picked up from the atmosphere.
- Two solar power systems, including a solar thermal unit on the roof that helps heat water for showers and dish washing, and photovoltaic panels in the front of the house which transform sunlight into electricity that powers lights in the dorm
- Lumber that was harvested from sustainable forests, and trim that includes Southern Yellow Pine from the Duke Forest
- DensArmor Plus drywall, a new generation of paperless drywall designed with a moisture-resistant core to resist mold
- Fiber optic wiring throughout the home that provides the dorm with the capability for spectacular Internet speeds up to 40 Gigabits per second
The design of the home, which was built to meet LEED gold certification, pays special attention to water conservation and efficiency. “We do have water harvesting, so we’re collecting rain water,” says Jim Gaston, Smart Home program director.
To do that, two 1,000-gallon rainwater collection systems from BRAE rainwater systems irrigate the property and provide water for toilets and the clothes washing machine, as well as landscape irrigation. “The only city water we use is for sinks, showers, and the dishwasher,” says Gaston. There is a backup system that taps into city water in case the rainwater levels get too low, but that hasn’t been put into use yet.
In addition, all of the plumbing fixtures are low-flow. The toilets, in fact, are pressure-assisted. “Air pressure helps to force out the water, so they have a strong flush with using very little water,” he says.
That is the main effort, to conserve water, but Gaston adds that the engineering students who live in the home have devised a way to cut down on the water used for showers. “We have a complex programmable lighting system in the house, so even the light switches in the house can be programmed to control any lights or groups of lights with timing features,” he says. “The students actually programmed the shower lights, so when you are taking a shower, the lights automatically go dim after three minutes to remind you to finish up and get out.”
The house is still relatively new, so it is still calculating the amount of water used by its residents. “We’re working to get digital pulse output meters on the city water so we can log that data,” explains Gaston. “What we’ve been doing until now is taking periodic readings. We are, however, monitoring the rain water data and that’s about 50 gallons a day.”
A building doesn’t have to be new construction to be a green building. Oregon State University (OSU) took its most recognizable campus building, Weatherford Hall, and renovated it into a LEED-certified structure.
Weatherford Hall, which was built in 1928, fell into failure and disrepair. It was no longer able to meet its needs, according to Dan Larson, associate director with University Housing and Dining Services. “The building is an icon for OSU,” says Larson. “It is the most photographed building on campus. It’s shown during televised athletic events.”
In other words, it isn’t the type of building that is simply torn down and replaced with something new.
Private donations and bond funding were required to pay for the renovations to the residence hall, and, Larson says, a concept was necessary to attract those donations. “The concept came from a partnership between the College of Engineering, the College of Business, and University Housing and Dining to start up a residential college on entrepreneurship,” he says. Weatherford Hall houses students in that program.
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Photo: Jim Gaston
Photovoltaic panels in the front transform sunlight into electricity, which powers the lights. |
LEED-certifiable construction is a campus standard, but Larson says turning Weatherford Hall into a green building had other implications. “It was a high-profile renovation and a good way to kick-start campus expectations that buildings be renovated to LEED certifications.”
One of the first sustainable things done in the renovation process was recycling onsite. For example, Larson says, there was a dining center built in the 1960s that was attached to the original building. This was knocked down and the rubble from the demolition was used to fill in the foundation area, rather than haul in fill materials.
Other sustainable efforts were natural, simply due to modernization of the products. The electrical system in Weatherford Hall was old and unable to handle computers and other appliances today’s college students use; the new electrical system is much more efficient. Old windows were replaced with new, more energy efficient panes. Paint used is low VOC.
“We don’t have solar panels or a green roof,” admits Larson. “This project was more about the little things you can do to reclaim and recycle.”
A unique aspect of the project is in the landscaping. “We have what is called an eco-lawn,” explains Larson. “The mix of the lawn has a lot more clover and yarrow in it, which gives it a green look, but requires less irrigation. So we use much less water.”
The building also uses on-demand water heating. “The water is heated as it goes through the system, instead of holding 20 gallons of hot water,” he says.
It also has a recirculation line, so the water isn’t wasted from the tap, running until it gets warm enough. “You use less energy to heat the water, and you use less water,” adds Larson.
Low-flow showerheads are also in place, “but that’s a standard for us in all of our residence halls now,” he says. “We’re able to use less water, not because students are taking shorter showers, but because less water is coming through.”
One popular water efficient item OSU decided against was low-flush or waterless toilets. “Given what a lot of students choose to put down those toilets, we needed all the flow we could get,” he says.
All of the lights put into the building require less energy consumption. Daylighting is more difficult in a residence hall, which highlights the challenges—and differences—between building or renovating a dormitory and building a classroom or commercial building.
“In a classroom building, you want to take advantage of day light so you don’t have to use artificial lights as much,” says Larson. “But in a dorm building, you can do that in an area like an atrium or a lobby, but when you realize that every window is essentially a student’s room, you need to provide shade and privacy.”
At Point Park University in Pittsburgh, the new green building is designed especially for performance dance.
“We started looking about 10 years ago to build new dance facilities,” says Bill Cameron, vice president of operations. “The facilities we had were undersized and antiquated.”
The school officials took benchmarking trips to other educational institutions with dance studios to get ideas of what worked—and what didn’t—in order to design their new building.
“Early on in the planning, we decided that we wanted this building to be, at minimum, LEED silver-certified,” says Cameron. “It was Point Park’s first sustainable new building on campus.”
The school hired a company that focused on sustainability and monitoring LEED projects. “We assigned that company to be our watchdog during the process to ensure that we were reaching our goals,” says Cameron. “As we got through the design process, we discovered there were some things we could do at little extra cost to reach gold standard.”
The facility is 40,000 square feet and, in addition to its dance space, houses locker rooms and showers. The showerheads are all low-flow, while the toilets and urinals are low-flush.
Dance studios hold a special challenge when it comes to energy, according to Cameron. “Not only are we trying to save energy, but we need to make it comfortable for the dancers,” he says. “Dancers come in at the beginning of the class and warm up. Then they start to dance and emit body heat and humidity into the room.
“It’s a challenge to keep it comfortable enough for them to take off their sweats and wear only leotards while warming up, making sure the space isn’t drafty and cold, but quickly be able to maintain that temperature in the space when they start dancing,” he continues. “That cycle repeats itself five to seven times a day, as classes rotate.”
The HVAC systems use waterside economizers. “We have a cooling tower on the roof of the building,” says Cameron. “We have days in the spring and fall that have a moderate need for cooling.”
The dance rooms, with 40 dancers in them, will begin to generate a heat load that requires cooling. Add to that, it isn’t unusual for dancers to spend five or more hours at the studio in a day.
“With the waterside economizer, what we are doing is instead of using mechanical cooling through an electrical chiller, we take the water circulating through the tower and extract cooling temperature water,” he says. The HVAC is also rigorously controlled by a Trane Tracer that allows staff to manage the building’s temperature levels.