Final booklet | Amary Frenz & Zach Wong

The Chartwell School Amary Frenz & Zachary Wong GSI: Gwen Fuertes Spring | 2014

The Chartwell School Architects: EHDD Architecture, San Francisco, California Energy Engineers: Taylor Engineering, Alameda, CA Structural Engineers: Tipping Mar & Associates, Berkeley, CA Mechanical Engineers: Taylor Engineering, Alameda, CA Electrical Engineers: Engineering Enterprise, Alameda, CA General Contractor: Ausonio Inc., Castro Valley, CA Landscape Architects: GLS Landscape, San Francisco, CA Green Consultant: EHDD Architecture, San Francisco, CA Acoustics: Charles M. Salter Associates, San Francisco, CA Lighting: Benya Lighting Design, West Linn, OR Daylighting: Loisos & Ubbelohde Associates, Alameda, CA

Client The Chartwell School Program K-12 Education with specific emphasis on teaching students with learning disabilities Location Seaside, CA Project Cost 9.2 Million USD Project Size 21,000 Square Feet

Project awards: 2009 - AIA Committee on the Environment - Top 10 Green Projects Award 2008 - LEED NC v2.1 Platinum, US Green Building Council 2007 - Green Apple Award from the Collaborative for High Performance Schools 2007 - Honor Award - Energy & Sustainability from the AIA SF Chapter 2007 - Environmental Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

The Chartwell School in Seaside, California is an excellent example of sustainable design factoring in energy efficient and net zero impact use. The key factor in the design of this school was to create a facility that is illuminated by daylight for 100% of its daytime usage. The design utilizes large amounts of north facing glazing as well as skylights to achieve these design goals. The campus also makes good use of radiant slab heating as well as low-E materials in its construction. The campus also utilizes as much rainwater as it can collect to supply water for toilets, watering the science gardens on site as well as non-potable sinks for hand washing.

The buildings are also framed two feet on center to reduce the amount of material used as well as to save on construction costs. On the roofs of the buildings, they use peel and stick photovoltaics connected to a 30 kW transformer also connected to the electrical grid.

The climate of the Monterey Bay area varies between 45 degrees and 70 degrees on average throughout the year. The area has a Mediterranean climate with dry warm summers and mild winters.

During the warm season, there is an 8% chance that percipitation will be observed during the day. In the winter there is a 34% chance. The relative humidity varies between 51 to 93%.

The orientation of the building takes advantage of the constant indirect north light and due to cloud cover usually in the Monterey Bay, sky lights help with daylighting indoors. Children’s play areas are located on the south side of the campus to allow the maximum amount of direct sunlight.

The Envelope

The wall construction of the building is visible to to the left where the the wall components are layred boards with a waterproof layer and wall. The walls are designed so that the components can be taken apart and all utilities such as electrical, HVAC and plumbing are segregated away from going through the exterior walls.

The components of the building can be recycled and pulled apart.

The building uses SIPS extensively in their construction and the materials of which were recycled from the pre-existing Fort Ord Army Base. The exterior is designed if windows wanted to be added that the siding can removed and then windows put in without disturbing the existing finishes. Or if the school intends to expand, it can do it by removing the panels from the wall and pulling out the panels rather than wasting time putting in portables.

All windows on campus are also designed to be removed and replaced with SIPS if necessary. The interior walls were designed with extra studs such that additional openings can be cut into the walls if extra openings are needed in future. There is no need to cut into the framing of the building or disturbing any of the other finishes that are existing.

Most south facing walls have few windows and are primarily constitued of these insulated panels. The use of radiant slab heating reduces the need for solar gain.

The timber frame of the building was chosen for its potential for reuse when balanced against its carbon footprint.

Non Structural walls of the interior also can be moved around to change the layouts of the rooms. A library of infomation was compiled and all building materials were labelled to provide details for deconstruction in future.

Effectiveness The building is fairly effective, since it it has fairly well insulated walls as well as reducing unnecessary solar heat gain since the region is usually shrouded in fog most days the year. The windows are kept to a minimum providing enough daylight while reducing heat loss through them.

Energy Use The charts that we found use the metric of BTUs per month for the total energy consumption for the site. It is broken down into a box plot seen at left for gas and electricity. This chart measures actual energy use rather than expected energy use in millions of BTUs per month.

The Collabrative for High Performance Schools is a non profit that works to make California schools more green. In 2006, the Chartwell school received the highest score to date when it was certified by the CHPS. The chart the upper right on the next page breaks down the electricity use for the year into kilowatts by day, day and time and the various uses that the school has. Such as its tech center, lighting, HVAC, and plugs.

The above diagram shows all of the sustainable uses for the building throughout the year.

Due to the variety of climates that Monterey goes through in the year, it experiences both rainy winters and drier hot summers. On the previous page, lower right image, you can see the amount of electricity produced by the photovoltaic array. In summer, this production is much higher when the school is not in session and helps offset costs by sending power back into the grid.

The design of the school is such that during the day, the school is heated with the radiant slab floor, and excess heat goes through vents into covered and enclosed hallways where it is exhausted.

The LEED certification for the building covers many different aspects. The school selected a site that could be reused since the previous tenants was the United States Army. The design incorporated large windows and skylights to employ good daylighting. The photovoltaic system is exceptional in that it produces 53 million kWh per year and offsets the production of 54,000 lbs of pollution. This is equivalent to planting 8 new acres of trees.

The entire campus uses 60% less water than conventional buildings and also uses furnishings, equipment and materials specifically designed to eliminate pollution.

All of these innovations allow the school to be both an efficient space and a comfortable space to work in for students and faculty alike. By using all of these strategies effectively and efficiently, the school achieved and still maintains one of the highest scores for a educational campus.

The water collection system doesn’t allow rain water to go to waste, and is reused to help ease the facility’s dependence on municipal services such as fresh water lines just to operate bathroom sinks and toilets.

The only thing that the school really requires from outside of its means of self production are gas lines to operate the boilers which pipe the water into the slab.

But with occupancy only being during the daylight hours and mild fluctuations in temperature, the system is rarely if ever overburdened to produce enough heat to keep students warm without any of the other design factors in place.

Post Occupancy Evaluation -

The Chartwell School

How data was collected Through the use of an online secured server, the participants were selected and their identities remained protected and as a result, the report is made up entirely of anonymous, aggregated results without any direct influence on individual rooms or work situations.

The core survey categories are seen in the upper left of this page where they cover general satisfaction, acoustic quality, air quality, cleanliness and maintenance, lighting, furnishings, layout and thermal comfort. As you can see from the web chart, the entire campus aggregated a high satisfaction averaging in the 70th percentile with only the quality of acoustics and layout holding the score down.

Using a standard 7 point scale for survey participants to click on, and those participants who responded that they experienced some dissatisfaction in their work space were prompted with a follow up question to ascertain the nature of their complaint, probing them for more information.

The Findings To the left, we can see the collected results of the seven aspects that resulted in the general satisfaction score. For the most part, the majority of survey participants found that the air quality was excellent as was the thermal comfort of the spaces. This may be owing to the ability to open windows as well as good design providing excellent lighting into the classrooms. The intended design was to allow for the rooms to be lit on most days by natural light and this has succeeded. Some dissenting comments were along the rational of a lack of control over the amount of the light for instance on an overcast day or when classrooms might need to show a film.

The use of radiant slab heating as well as venting throughout allows the classrooms to be comfortable for the most part. Responses dealing with “hot days� in particular, most survey participants indicated they merely opened a window and a good circulatory system allowed thermal comfort for most of the survey takers.

But where the school did most poor was in office layout, furnishings and acoustic quality with 56%, 70% and 55% people satisfied, respectively.

Of these, furnishings can be easily remidied by the change of furniture, and the layout can be modified in the long term due to the modular nature of the buildings to allow for expansion.

Acoustics Overall, users were most dissatisfied

with sound privacy in the workplace-that is, they felt their conversations could be easily overheard, and vice versa. Many reported that this effected their ability to get their job done. The sources of this noise were mostly the hallways and neighboring rooms, and 68% reported excessive echoing.

In addition to conversations, building equipment itself was reported as a source of bothersome noice. From a sample of complaints, it was stated that the plumbing and class bell both make excessive amounts of noise. However, the addition of acoustic material in the ceiling has “improved these problems significantly�.

Office Layout Occupants surveyed were dissatisfied with the amount of space for work and storage, and the the level of visual privacy. The school was designed to be easily expanded in the future, so the lack of space could be potentially remedied. In addition it was designed so that walls could be easily added and removed, as the walls incorperate more load-bearing structure than is necessary with the current design. Therefore, more walls could be added to increase visual privacy in the offices.

A sample of acoustic complaints from the Chartwell POE, CBE, Berkeley, CA.

The Solar Picture

The position and layout of the entire campus is taken into careful account as all of the buildings are oriented towards the cardinal points. The school itself is at 36.6 degrees north and 121 degrees west at an elevation under 1000 feet. To the left, a sun path diagram for the latitude is overlaid over the school. The majority of glazing is on north facades and the only real time this may be a problem for the schools is after the spring equinox when the sun begins to extend past due east and west up until the fall equinox when daylight will begin to return to a less severe angle.

In the diagram below, the majority of the north facades of the building have much more glazing than on the south side where you see a shed style roof facing the sun.

This allows for the use of Photovoltaics on the roof.

Given the hours of principal use of the facilities between 8am and 3pm, the sun rarely will be too much of a factor in the natural light of this room from the spring equinox until early June and from late August on.

But for the majority of classroom needs, the natural lighting coming from the sun was reported as sufficient to more than sufficient.

Given the responses from the school’s Post Occupancy evaluation, the majority of complaints against the campus itself were for acoustics and furnishings and the ability to control light. The use of glazing without any architecturally integrated features meant teachers only had control of blinds to block out light when needed.

Image & Info Courtesey Architectsandartisans.com schoolfacilities.com aiasf.org treehugger.com AMBAG CSUMB SFML Digital Globe USDA Farm Service Agency Greensource Construction Chartwell.org Center for the Built Environment, Berkeley, CA