Energy Ideas

School Construction News continues its dialogue with Lisa Heschong, principal of Heschong Mahone Group and a licensed architect. She divides her professional practice between energy research, writing and building design. Ms. Heschong was the Q&A in the September 2004 issue.

School Construction News: With the increases in the cost of natural gas and oil prices and the need for greater imports, what can schools do to reduce energy costs and conserve resources?

Lisa Heschong: Well, natural gas and oil implies they are primarily concerned about heating costs and they want to try and do whatever they can to reduce these heating costs, probably with the least investment possible and the quickest turn-around possible.

Heating costs for schools tend to be more of an issue for the northern half of the country. In the southern half of the country, most of the conditioning costs go into cooling rather than heating.

One interesting idea, which doesn’t go over well with the athletic departments, is to consider changing school schedules. There are two reasons to do this. We have learned children – especially teenagers – have later circadian [rhythm] systems than adults. Teenagers – especially high schoolers -are mentally more alert later in the day. So by moving the start of high school later in the day, you don’t have the coldest hours of the morning to deal with in terms of heating. You can get savings on your heating bills and you can also get better performance from the kids academically because they are not trying to learn at seven in the morning.

As I understand it, the main push to move high school schedules earlier and earlier is to extend the time period for sports practice in the afternoon. In terms of circadian performance, you want kids to be active in the morning. So putting them outside in the morning, and having them do athletics, is good for their circadian system and saves heating costs for the schools. That may seem a little wild, but it is a very interesting solution for two needs.

Certainly, anything you can do to better insulate the buildings will save heating costs and is usually the most economical investment that can be made. Can we add more insulation to the attics? Do we have blown-in insulation in the walls? Has it settled? Do we need to renew that? That is an excellent checklist to go through.

A bigger level investment is to retrofit the windows with high-performance glass. There are now options of low-e double-glazed, triple-glazed systems that will out perform older glazing systems. Single-pane glass in the schools would be a big energy target. The windows should not necessarily be reduced in size because with high-performance glazing it is now possible to balance the heat loads with the glazing while simultaneously preserving view and daylight.

A less intrusive measure that schools could consider, especially if they are in cold, northern areas, is to add insulating shutters to the inside of their windows. These can provide both security and blackout capability, and also greatly reduce heat loss at night.

Water heating, especially for schools with cafeterias, tends to be a fairly high gas usage and there are lots of opportunities to improve the efficiency of water heating systems. The simplest and most obvious is to make sure that all hot water pipes are insulated, but installing more efficient equipment can produce good savings as well.

SCN: Like sensors?

LH: I would strongly recommend bringing in an engineer to discuss options, but it is a fairly good target if you’re concerned about gas costs.

Utility companies have special programs targeted at helping districts find energy savings. Step one, would be to get in touch with your utility representative and find out what kinds of programs they have, and what recommendations they have, and who they recommend locally to do audits and help provide this service. There are also state and local programs that are anxiously looking for districts to help save energy.

Back to saving hot water, any measure that reduces hot water use also saves the energy to heat the water. Look at water conservation measures – dish washing and laundry systems that use less water also repay in gas savings in addition to water savings. Dripping hot water faucets in bathrooms are big wasters.

SCN: So, on the West Coast, with the electricity situation there, would that be something you would spec into any new facility?

LH: Title 24 requires lighting control and HVAC controls as the legal minimum. It is possible to go significantly beyond that with even smarter controls. Controls also help existing buildings because you don’t have to do a lot of infrastructure retrofit. Step one is always making sure you are not wasting energy with leaky faucets or open windows. Step two is to make sure everything is insulated as much as possible – all the pipes, ducts, walls, and roofs. Then step three is to look at upgrading controls. Step four is to look at installing or retrofitting higher-efficiency equipment.

SCN: In terms of energy efficiency, do you find that it is easier working on a brand new facility? Or is it sometimes easier to go in and retrofit an existing college or school?

LH: When you are building a new facility, it behooves you to make as much investment in energy efficiency as you can because it’s vastly more cost effective to do it right first and you will get the longest term payoff for that investment. When you’re building a facility that is going to last 50 years, if you do it right now, you will get 50 years of payback. It is vastly more expensive to retrofit a facility than it is to do it right when you are building it. So school districts should absolutely make sure that all new construction is as efficient as possible because that’s the best investment, and then try to upgrade their older facilities as much as possible.

SCN: What would you specify or envision in the most optimal, smart school?

LH: I think that the CHPS Best Practices manual has an excellent guide to that. And the CHPS program has also developed a prototype classroom. Again, this is in California, but there are similar efforts in other parts of the country, to develop best practices manuals. That is a really, really big question.

What is important about CHPS is that it is multidimensional. We all know that saving energy is extremely important but CHPS puts together a list that balances a lot of the things that need to happen to generate a high performance school and you can’t sacrifice one for the other. You need to be able to do all of those things simultaneously.