Green garage up for recognition

Green project has bright future
Emma Smith, a fifth grader living in Alexandria, Virginia asked her mom if they could buy a recycling bin for their apartment. Her mother didn’t want to because the bin was large and their home is small. Smith didn’t stop there. “I went down to the front desk of our apartment building and asked them and now we have a recycling bin in our building’s mailroom for the entire building to use!”

What inspired such a young girl to recycle? It was an educational tour she took of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project - the new Department of Defense administrative office complex - that’s being constructed on Fort Belvoir at the Mark Center. The project’s many energy savings features are expected to save 30 percent of the energy of a traditional office building and save taxpayers millions.

The project team invited one hundred 4th and 5th graders from John Adams Elementary School, to take part in their Go Green Education Program. The project’s team includes the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York District, Duke Realty Corporation and Clark Construction.

Joe Gabel, who works for Clark Construction, developers of the Go Green Education Program, said, “The goal of this program is to extend our sustainable impact into the community in which we live and work. This complex is an excellent example of a green building and we wanted to show it to these children.”

“This project is a success story,” said Sean Wachutka, program manager, BRAC 133 Project, New York District. “This is going to be the first project of this size the Corps of Engineers has done that has stayed on schedule to becoming Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold certified.”

The project implements Recommendation #133, one of the 2005 Base Closure and Realignment Commission Recommendations, and when completed will become part of Fort Belvoir. This design-build complex is a 1.7 million square foot facility that sits on a 16-acre campus. When completed, it will include two multi-story towers - 15 stories and 17 stories, two parking garages, a visitor center, remote inspection facility and a public transportation center. This fall, 6,400 personnel from multiple DoD agencies will start moving into the new complex. Currently, they occupy leased space throughout the National Capital Region.

Go Green Education Program

Wearing hard hats and other safety gear, the students were taken to four hands-on educational demonstrations named Team Energy Efficiency, Team Water Use Reduction, Team Recycling and Team Erosion Control.

Team Energy Efficiency

The goal of this station was to show the students simple concepts of energy efficiency used on this construction site. The station was divided into three sections, each presenting a different energy efficient concept— Controllability, Light-emitting diode (LED) Lighting and Energy Recovery. The students were escorted into a room where their movement triggered a motion sensor which turned on lights and a utility fan. After showing the students the motion sensor and wiring, they were escorted out and encouraged to count down aloud from 30 seconds until the motion sensor automatically turned off the lights and fan.

Next, the students were escorted into a room where incandescent lighting and LED lighting were displayed and they were shown the advantages and disadvantages of using both lighting sources. The new complex will have LED and fluorescent lighting which costs a bit more to purchase upfront, but will reap tremendous savings down the road because this lighting requires less electricity to run and LED and fluorescent light bulbs last more years then typical bulbs - up to eight years! Natural lighting is also going to be used to the fullest. The complex is being constructed with large windows that will allow a lot of outside light into the buildings.

Team Water Use Reduction

The goal of this station was to show the students some of the steps the project team took to reduce water on the project. They were taken through the following two activities. The students took part in an activity called – “Go with the Flow,” which consisted of a station that had a faucet mock-up with a bathtub head, shower head, and energy efficient shower head. The students were asked if they thought it was more energy efficient to take a shower or a bath. The students took turns running each faucet for 10 seconds and compared the amount of water used by each. It was concluded that two factors influence whether to shower or bathe: flow rate and duration. If you typically shower for over eight minutes, you would save water if you switched to a low-flow shower head or opt for a bath instead.

The students also took part in an activity called – “The Running Toilet,” which showed them how they can save water by using a low flush toilet versus a standard one. The students did a foot race where they carried a full jug of water, representing a standard toilet, to a half-way point and swapped it for a half full jug, representing a low flush toilet, to the finish line. The idea was to have them feel the significant weight difference and how this relates to reduction in water use.

“The new complex will be using low flush toilets in all restrooms and faucets which will yield enough water savings in one day to fill a standard swimming pool,” said Gabel.

Water will also be saved outside of the complex. The landscaping will consist of drought tolerant native plants that will not need any supplemental irrigation other than natural rain water. In total, the entire complex will use almost 50% less water than a traditional building of the same size - a savings of 4.5 million gallons of drinking water annually.