Schools Go Green

Architect John Boecker acknowledges that his clients within the Hanover (Pennsylvania) Public School District did not have green building objectives at the top of their agenda when they asked him to design them a new elementary school. But they weren’t hard to convince.

“Over a series of presentations with the school board, and in public meetings with the community, we were able to convince them that pursuing a high-performance green building would be quite advantageous to them,” Boecker says. “One advantage would be operations cost. One would be student performance.”

The resulting structure—the new Clearview Elementary School—became the second school in the United States certified under the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System.

And it certainly won’t be the last. Interest in LEED-certification for schools has grown so dramatically that the USGBC has recently established a new set of standards specifically for schools. One industry poised to benefit from the trend is concrete construction, as concrete construction is one of the most efficient methods of achieving LEED certification and general green building objectives.

The key is the use of insulating concrete forms (ICFs), which are made from insulation, stacked in the shape of the structure and filled with reinforced concrete to create a solid wall with excellent thermal mass and structural strength. ICFs are lightweight, interlocking foam panels that remain in place as a functional part of the wall after the concrete is poured. The insulating qualities of the foam panels, against noise and weather, combine with the strength and stability of the reinforced concrete to create a product growing in popularity and use.

“It was a really good material in terms of the thermal properties, and because of the insulation value of those forms, that was the primary reason we used the ICFs,” Boecker says.

The same thinking drove the development of 77,000-square-foot Alvaton Elementary School in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The $11.3 million, two-story building is home to 700 students, and thus far is yielding the energy-saving results officials of Warren County Public Schools had sought.

“We just wanted the energy-efficiency,” says district building official Charles Rector. “We weren’t necessarily looking for a green building.”

But as the district investigated approaches and material choices, officials concluded that ICF walls would provide the best combination of value.

“The ICF wall is a very energy-efficient wall,” Rector says. “We were already doing geothermal at several of our other schools, so we just combined the two ICF walls, geothermal and an energy-efficient roof.”

Although the building is too new for the district to be able to quantify the energy savings, officials are sufficiently convinced that they have already committed to using ICF walls for a new middle school and a new high school coming up in the next few years.

ICF use in school building looks to intensify in the years ahead, and the growth will be pushed in part by state legislative action mandating green building practices to varying degrees.

There is some precedent for state-sponsored incentives for the use of ICFs. In 2004, the State of Texas offered homeowners credits on their home insurance if they built new homes using ICFs. The same thinking is now being applied to schools in several states.

In Pennsylvania, the state legislature is incentivizing LEED-certified building of schools by offering school districts better reimbursement packages if they meet LEED standards. In Kentucky, the requirement is more direct: The state has mandated that all new schools must be built with ICFs. That certainly presents an opportunity to concrete contractors, but it’s not one for which they will qualify easily.

Denny Humphery, president of Louisville-based Cherokee Construction & Excavating, says contractors who hope to win bids for ICF school projects must show previous background doing ICF projects.

“They’ve got a thing set up where you have to have three ICF projects under your belt before they will let you bid,” Humphrey says. “I’m working on my second project now and I’m getting ready to do my third one.”

Why mandate the use of ICFs? The bottom line impact at Clearview Elementary might provide a clue. Hanover school officials say the solid concrete construction and improved energy efficiency will save the district $34,000 a year. Multiplied by the number of schools in a state, that’s some serious change.

But can concrete—as part of the overall green building package—actually make students learn better? Boecker believes they can, and says the assertion is based on studies of student performance when daylighting is improved, as it is in LEED-certified schools.

“There were several studies done looking at daylighting in classrooms,” Boecker says. “They studied the student performance over a long period of time, and student performance in daylighted classrooms was 20 to 25 percent faster. One study from a grad student at the University of Pennsylvania indicates less asthma and less absenteeism on the part of students and teachers is a key factor.

The overall benefits are apparent enough that Boecker finds himself with more requests for LEED-certified schools, using ICFs, than ever before. At present, he has six such projects in the offing.

He partially attributes the uptick, which has been most dramatic in the past year, to the incentives the State of Pennsylvania is offering school districts.

The USGBC has also recognized the growing interest among schools by developing a school-specific program and set of standards. Before the LEED for Schools program was rolled out in December 2006, schools had to pursue LEED certification according to standards established for commercial buildings.

The new standard is designed to “recognize the unique nature and educational aspects of the design and construction of K-12 schools.” The standard addresses issues such as classroom acoustics, master planning, mold prevention and joint use of facilities.

USGBC also provides schools with a reference guide, workshop and online tools to help them meet standards, and also seeks to help schools better understand the business case for green building.

All the incentives would probably not appeal to school district officials if the use of ICFs and other elements of green building added major costs to construction projects. But Boecker says they do not.

“We did a rather elaborate cost analysis, and looking at the full cost of both materials and labor, it ended up being a wash compared to how we would have built it conventionally with steel studs,” Boecker says. “You still have the internal drywall you would use. In this case, the material is more expensive, but the labor is a bit cheaper, because it’s really easy to put together—just like Legos.”

The same was true of the project schedule, Boecker says.

“There was a positive impact on the schedule because the exterior walls could go up a bit more quickly using ICFs as opposed to standard metal stud masonry.”

Cost-efficiency, energy-efficiency, state incentives and possibly even better student performance seem to have touched off a trend that can only benefit the concrete construction industry. Contractors just have to keep an eye on the market and know how to access the opportunity when their town’s school officials jump on the bus.