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METRO VANCOUVER -- The new child care building at Simon Fraser University is designed to collect more water than it flushes and generate enough energy to sustain itself and have some left over for its neighbours.
More than just sustainable, the UniverCity Childcare Centre is poised to be a net contributor rather than a consumer of energy and precious resources.
"We thought if we are going to put anybody in the greenest building in Canada we should start with the kids," said project leader Dale Mikkelsen. "That way what is weird to us just becomes normal to them. They will move on and wonder why they aren't flushing the toilet with rainwater."
SFU's Community Trust, which develops and administers the on-campus sustainable community, opted to attempt a Living Building-certified structure, a standard that when fully achieved goes beyond the industry's usual sustainable building standards.
Most buildings in the neighbourhood are built to silver and gold LEED standard, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system.
But the sustainability knob on the Living Building standard goes up to 11.
The International Living Future Institute identifies 20 sustainable values divided into seven performance areas called "petals" - site, water, energy, health, materials, equity, and beauty. Only three buildings in the world are certified in all seven petals. Another two dozen are in the process of being built or certified, including the VanDusen Botanical Garden visitors' centre in Vancouver.
The child care building's performance will be measured over a year, starting next month, to ensure all the energy standards are met before certification.
"Many of those buildings will get some of the petals but not all of them," said Mikkelsen. "Obviously we want to get all of them at once."
Simplicity rules
What is most striking about the single-storey building and its design is its simplicity.
Plastics - banned from the structure as products of the petrochemical industry - are nowhere to be seen, replaced by natural wood structures and trim, reclaimed wood doors and sliding partitions, and exquisite wooden toys.
Rather than extensive ductwork distributing heat and providing ventilation, heat radiates from the floor when needed and ventilation is provided by vents - operated by carbon dioxide detectors - that open directly to the outside.
Rainwater is collected and treated with UV filters, then used to flush the toilets and run the laundry. The entire year's supply of water is stored in a giant cistern under the outdoor play area.
Water flushed from the toilets is treated with a bioreactor and drip-fed underground to the plants and shrubs that add life and texture to the outdoor play area.
"It's all painfully simple when you stop to think about it," said Mikkelsen.
Water heated by the sun on the roof is fed into the neighbourhood hot water heating grid and sipped back into the building as needed. The amount of energy generated by the hot water system is designed to exceed the building's net energy consumption for heating and electricity.
Windows are placed to maximize natural light, to minimize the building's reliance on electricity.
Rather than a conventional outside wall of concrete and an inside wall of wallboard, the inside and outside walls consist of single structural units, constructed from beetle-killed B.C. pine, milled in Prince George, and Forest Stewardship Council certified cedar siding.
Clean lines and airy space, rather than space-age technology, define the feel of this space.
Playground structures are constructed mainly from locally harvested wood and recycled rope, all designed by the architect and local artists.
Playing well with others
UniverCity's commitment to share innovations generated by the project helped winnow down the list of developers willing to take on the project.
Some did not want to share, said Mikkelsen. Hardly the attitude you'd want in a child care project.
Ultimately, Hughes Condon Marler Architects and space2place landscape architects joined the project, along with a handful of specialized engineering firms engaged to work out cost-effective solutions to the building's structural and efficiency requirements. The building was constructed by the Ledcor Special Projects Group.
Because of the unconventional nature of the project, a number of regulatory hitches had to be ironed out on the fly. The non-toxic drain tile replacing the standard PVC plastic pipes had to be hand-drilled and tested for integrity because it was not recognized by the Canadian Standards Association.
"It didn't cost us any more, it was just the time and emotional trauma of uncertainty," Mikkelsen said.
Some battles were shelved for another day. Fraser Health was willing to approve the building's on-site purified rainwater as potable, but the City of Burnaby was insistent that it be chlorinated. Since chlorine is a red list material, forbidden under Living Building rules, drinking water for the building is normal tap water.
A two-storey enclosed playground slide constructed from steel - rather than the typical plastic slides available in Canada - had to be manufactured in Germany and is now bobbing across the Atlantic Ocean. The environmental cost of shipping the slide and indeed all the fossil-fuel-derived energy consumed in construction will be rectified by a carbon-offset purchase.
On-campus baby boom
Despite the high-density nature of the UniverCity community, it has a surprisingly high concentration of children.
"We have a little bit of a baby boom going on here," said Mikkelsen.
A rundown campus building is being converted to an elementary school, retrofitted to a LEED gold building standard with about $1 million from each of the SFU Community Trust, school district and the province.
The plan was to open a single wing for about 80 children. On registration day, 179 children showed up.
"The school district had a holy sh- moment and everybody's eyes were opened to how many kids are living up here," he said. "The demand to deliver a child care facility became quite pressing."
The child care centre has accepted 25 children and will add 25 in six months, after a licensing inspection.
As it turned out, achieving greater efficiency was more a function of thoughtful design than expensive technology.
The facility was built for $3.2 million, about 15-per-cent below the cost of building a conventional structure for a daycare and within the original budget for the facility set in 2006, Mikkelsen said.
"We are above the LEED platinum standard for about $25,000 less per child care space," he said.
-reprinted from the Vancouver Sun