The energy lab is a model of sustainable building, meeting both the LEED for schools Platinum criteria and the elusive Living Building Challenge, the first school building in the world to do so.
The US green building council established the LEED specification to promote leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED), but has no post-occupancy monitoring.
LEED for Education scorecard for Energy Lab:
We created the TCM (telemetry control and monitoring) system you know as
elab2hpa.edu, and later the
EMC systems to monitor all of the metrics specified in the LBC evaluation. These criteria formed some of the "petals" of the LBC, which is pass/fail.
The monitoring system had to gather data on water, energy and environment every few minutes for a year. If we interrupted the data gathering, we had to start over.
We were then audited and later certified in 2011, one year after the building opened for students.
Some of the criteria of the LBC include self sufficiency in energy, water and waste. Nothing in the building can be toxic in either production, use or disposal. We also had to source our materials based on density, meaning our building had less impact on the planet through transportation of building materials than any other building.
Look around the elab for the following features:
- passive ventilation
- passive illumination
- double glazed windows
- visibility to the outside from every space
- large thermal mass
- heat pump for heating
- thermionic heating and cooling
- water catchment and treatment
- onsite waste treatment
- solar PV
- solar thermal energy
- wind energy
- no toxic materials
- building automation system to minimize vampire loads
- locally sourced materials based on density
- FSC certified lumber
- LED lighting
- energy storage systems
- low sound levels
- adequate lighting levels
- No VOCs present
- Adequate ventilation (low CO2, adequate ACH)
Questions:
- If this building cost 3.7M$ to build, and has 6550 sq. ft. of area, what is the cost per square foot?
- How does this compare to other buildings in Hawaii in general, and resort homes in particular?
- What advantages to the systems above have from a cost standpoint?
- What other advantages to the systems above provide?
- Why is this so important for an educational facility?
- Look up LEED for Schools. What are the major guidelines we had to follow?
- Look up the Living Building Challenge. What are the 7 major petals?
- Why are these different from LEED?
- If you were designing a new school building, what would you include?
- Our next project will be to design a new school. What lessons would you bring into this design process?
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