On Tuesday we had a meeting with the Alan Lloyd (the vice principal) and Andy Martin about the colleges new building and the plans for rebuilding the rest of college in the next few years. They talked to us about what environmental improvements they plan to make to the college in the new buildings.
This is a short version of what they said and showed us on the powerpoint.
The old buildings were all outdated with high running and maintenance costs just because of how inefficient they were energy wise.
The new building that's just been completed is rated by BREEAM as being "very good" whilst is the second best award they give out. This is because it has solar shading to keep the sunlight of the windows whilst allowing light to get through (this keeps the sun from heating up the building in summer). It has large pipes in the ceilings allowing air to flow through the building to keep it cool as well as having an automated system that automatically opens the windows if the temperature gets to 22 degrees, this means that the new building only has two rooms that use air conditioning in them. This saves a lot of energy as there is less need for air conditioning.
Phase 2 of the building project will have the same energy saving technology as the new building but will also have a rainwater harvesting system (where rainwater is collected in a large tank on the roof and used for the toilets), this will reduce the amount of waste water in these buildings by a large amount.
Phases 3 and 4 will both be built to BREEAMs highest rating "excellent". This is because it will have more green space as the college plans to buy a greenfield site next door and use it as a sports pitch and a general grassy area. These buildings will use groundsource heat pumps (large 100metre deep holes in the ground which provide cool water in summer and warm water in winter) to either heat or cool the buildings depending on the season. Piping on the roofs will provide warm water as water will be pumped through the pipes and sunlight will heat the water in the pipes, this water will then be used to head the radiators in these buildings. As well as that a combined heat and power generator will be installed, this will bother power the new building and heat it as the heat given off by the generator will be sent around the new buildings through pipes to heat it during the winter.
At any point in the future new technology like solar cells can be installed onto the roofs of the new buildings.
As a result of the energy efficiency of the new buildings the college will have lower fuel and heating bills as well as lower maintenance costs and the buildings themselves will last longer than the ones we have now.
Any opinions on anything said in this post would be good.
