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New school turns over a green leaf toward energy conservation
By Rachel Pleasant
Staff Writer
North Charleston Elementary School—the 93,000-square-foot project completed at the start of the school year—is more than a shiny new place for kids to learn and play.
It is also a marvel of modern engineering, construction and architecture.
The school was designed and built to obtain LEED—Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design—certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, a designation that recognizes energy-efficiency measures taken on construction projects.
General contractor Trident Construction Co. is currently completing the paperwork-intensive certification process, which should be completed in the coming weeks.
Should the building become certified, it would be added to a list of only five LEED buildings in the state. It would also be the first LEED school in South Carolina and the first such building in the Charleston area.
Going green
The Charleston County School District chose to build North Charleston Elementary School using LEED guidelines to support the Noisette urban redevelopment project, which places an emphasis on environmentally friendly buildings.
“We thought we would be a good partner with the city of North Charleston,” said Bill Lewis, the district’s executive director of facilities improvement. “The inspiration was the location.”
The school, which took 14 months to complete, cost a total of $12.3 million to not only build, but also outfit the school with furniture and computers.
Despite all the energy-saving measures taken at the building, Lewis said, the price tag is comparable to that of a traditional school.
Low-cost comfort
Visitors to the school, located at 4921 Durant Ave., may be somewhat dumbfounded by the exposed wiring and massive machinery, but each bit of equipment plays a role in making this school energy efficient.
At the center of the school sits a huge metal box. The box stores 90,800 pounds of ice, frozen by the school’s chiller during the nighttime hours.
During the day, water flows through the ice and travels to the air handler. At the air handler, air blows over the cooled water. From there, the cooled air is blown through the building.
Because the system creates enough ice to last all day, the school doesn’t have to run its chillers— pieces of equipment that use tremendous amounts of energy—all day.
The air conditioning system represents a huge component of the energy efficiency of the building.
“That’s one of the main things,” said David Collins, field superintendent for Trident Construction Co. The NCES team included Trident, and the architecture firm McKellar and Associates, Forsberg Engineering, EPIC Engineering, Heery International Inc. construction management, LEED commissioning firm CxGBS and other subcontractors.
The system will pay for itself in five years, said NCES principal Charles Cavileer.
“After that, we’re saving money,” he said.
During the colder months, a boiler heats water, and air is blown over the warm water to heat the building.
Let the sun shine
In addition to the air conditioning system, the NCES team also designed and built the 34 classrooms to require little or no artificial lighting.
In one of the school’s main corridors, visitors notice partially arched ceilings. The ceiling angles sunlight, which enters the building through a series of windows under the roof, downward, illuminating the corridor.
Similar approaches were taken in classrooms, and on an early September day, visitors found a number of teachers conducting classes without a single light on.
Should there be a need for additional light, a series of switches give school personnel the option to turn on a portion of the available bulbs, thereby using only what they need.
Project architect, John Ciccarelli of McKellar, also designed 20-foot windows to illuminate stairwells and placed overhangs over windows to help buffer direct light from entering and heating the building.
Grade: A-plus
Lewis couldn’t provide figures regarding how much the school will save the district in terms of energy costs.
“We just don’t have the long-term experience to say how much,” Lewis said.
Besides, Lewis said, the benefits of green building go beyond simple numbers.
“Any of the utility savings are going to be the icing on the cake. I’d rather under-promise and over-perform. We didn’t go into this justifying it on the long-term cost savings, but we believe they will be there,” Lewis said. “When you go into the school, the impact of the natural day lighting, all of those things are very evident. They really set the tone of the whole school climate. The fact we can reduce the cost of air conditioning and lighting is a plus.”
Natural lighting has been shown to reduce absenteeism and violence, and improved indoor air quality has already proved healthier for teachers, Cavileer said.
“I have teachers who usually have sinus and asthma issues. They haven’t had to go to their doctors this year,” Cavileer said.
Lessons learned
With construction officially completed and the school open, the NCES team can move on to other projects, and in the case of Trident, more traditional construction.
But, said superintendent Collins, that doesn’t mean that everything learned on the NCES job will be forgotten. He plans to incorporate many of the things he learned at the school on other projects, even if he doesn’t have to.
As part of the LEED requirements, the NCES team had to recycle at least 50% of materials that would otherwise have been sent to the dump. That requirement proved one of the most challenging, but by the end of the job, 453 tons of everything from lumber to metal to concrete were recycled on the project, said Todd Bulwinkle, Trident’s LEED coordinator.
The NCES experience will be a valuable one to all involved, said Ciccarelli, as there is a growing awareness surrounding green building.
“I think the general public is starting to understand the importance of the environment in general and have a better understanding of what green means,” he said.
As for the school district, Lewis said NCES won’t be a one-time thing.
“It’s good for the long-term benefits to the taxpayer.It’s a hedging device. The more expensive energy gets, the higher the return to consider these things,” he said.
Rachel Pleasant is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at rpleasant@charlestonbusiness.com.
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