Developers aim for a silver LEED rating
The new Spring Creek Fire Hall is fanning the flames of Whistler’s sustainability initiatives.
The building, which broke ground this week, will be the first of its kind in Whistler, complete with a sod roof and solar chimney.
Once built, it will have a green building rating under the U.S. LEED system (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).
"It was just consistent with where we were going," said Bill Barratt, general manager of community services at municipal hall, of the decision to green the new fire hall.
"It was an opportunity to move towards sustainable buildings through the LEED program."
LEED buildings are rated through a point scale for their green practices in design, construction and operation. Under the LEED system there are four levels of building certification: certified, silver, gold and platinum.
"We’re shooting for silver," said Graham Smith, development services manager with B.C. Building Corporation.
"Going for gold frankly just costs gold. You’d have to put in even fancier systems than we could afford."
The $1.56 million fire hall will replace the existing A-frame in Creekside.
"It’s going to be a nice facility compared to what they’re in now," said Fire Chief Bruce Hall.
"Right now the A-frame at Creekside doesn’t even have a sewer or water in it at all. It’s basically just a garage on a slab."
In the early developmental stages of the project, Whistler firefighters formed a fire hall committee, made up of both career and paid on-call firemen. That committee has been involved in the design and development of the new facility.
Smith says the Spring Creek Fire Hall will be a showcase building for the community, demonstrating Whistler’s commitment to going green.
"(Whistler) wants to have some actual proof on the ground that they are going green," he said.
"The advantage of having a green fire hall is that it is a relatively small project, it’s relatively inexpensive compared to a larger project and... you can have it done within a year."
The three-bay station will showcase a number of key environmental features. One major green detail, both physically and functionally, lies on top of the building itself in the form of a sod roof.
"What you’re essentially doing is you’re almost lifting the ground off the ground and putting it up in the air," said Smith.
Green rooftops are not new technology. Some European countries have been actively pursuing green roofs in recent years. For example, all new buildings in Switzerland must have green space on their rooftops equivalent to what was taken over by the building’s footprint.
The fire hall is Whistler’s first shot at a green roof and it has a number of functions and benefits.
Rainwater is absorbed and then evaporates back into the air, as opposed to bouncing off a traditional roof surface, picking up speed and washing topsoil away, which in turn creates sediment problems.
The grass also protects the roof membrane from ultraviolet light. UV rays tend to break down traditional flat roofs, leaving them cracked and leaky.
Traditional black roofs also create heat islands in the atmosphere. This happens when heat is reflected by the roof back into the air.
Smith said heat islands artificially raise temperatures in cities and contribute to global warming.
"The planting acts in the same way as gravel on a roof but it’s even more benign because it also adds oxygen, water and nutrients back to the environment," he said.
In a way, the roof acts like the soil that used to be there before the building was built. It provides habitat and food for birds and insects and oxygen for the environment.
In addition, the fire hall is located at a gateway to the Spring Creek subdivision and the green roof will blend in with the natural environment, reducing the visual impact of the building.
Jutting out of the green roof will be a training tower, common in most fire halls.
The Spring Creek tower will serve three common functions: a training tower for the firemen, a hose drying tower, and a seismic brace. These features are fairly common in most other fire hall towers.
But this training tower is also a solar chimney, acting as a ventilating device.
"It’s actually part of the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system," said Smith.
The tower acts as a vent shaft, enhancing the stack effect, which forces the warm air up and out.
There will also be natural ventilation, with operable windows to cool things down inside. This means the firemen will always be getting fresh air instead of recycled air. And fresher air equals higher productivity for the workers inside, said Smith.
Significant overhangs and other solar shading will reduce the heat gain and the green roof itself takes a long time for heat to penetrate.
In the winter the building will be heated with a high efficiency boiler, which is more energy efficient than electric heat.
By investing money in the quality of the heating and cooling systems from the outset, Smith said there will be benefits in the future with reduced energy bills.
The fire hall is expected to perform at least 25 per cent better in energy efficiency than a similar building without the green features.
"The walls of the building are designed to perform very well," Smith said. "It’s an integrated system so the amount of glass, the walls and the heating system all act together to make high efficiency use of energy."
Again, Smith said some of these ideas are hardly revolutionary, rather they date back to some of the earliest principles of design, like having windows that open for ventilation instead of using air conditioning.
The green points in the LEED system don’t just lie in the functional engineering of the fire hall.
Smith said the developers will be using sustainable and recyclable materials wherever possible. He cites wood and steel as materials with low embodied energy, which is defined by such things as how much energy goes into the construction, how long the material lasts and what happens to it when it is demolished.
Unlike vinyl siding, wood can be reused and a large percentage of steel is recycled content.
The building will also contain pieces of a recycled kitchen. Interface carpeting, which is made up of post consumer waste materials so its embodied energy is very low, will be laid on the floor.
Throughout construction Smith said they will be looking at construction waste management and subdividing the waste into what can be recycled.
The LEED standards apply to the outside of the building as well.
Designers are planning a dry concept landscaping called xeriscape.
Xeriscape landscaping uses indigenous planting. This will eliminate artificial watering of foreign species and save on water consumption, another green initiative.
Smith said the consultants and designers are acting together in an integrated design management process. They are trying to get the building’s features to act together to produce the best environmental practices.
"By using the Integrated Design Process we’re trying to make the building act as a whole – kind of like an organic entity as opposed to stuffing in systems after the fact," he said.
"It’s quite a different way of producing a design and it’s been very successful in that regard."
Council recently approved a 10 per cent increase in the hall’s budget, bringing total costs up to $1.56 million, due in part to higher than anticipated site servicing.
Smith said the costs of the actual building itself are lower than comparable non-LEED standard fire halls in Richmond and Vancouver.
"We had to work away at it to ensure it was optimum value for the money," he said.
"Whatever Cadillac features it had were definitely addressed and were definitely pared down, but it still maintained all of its green features."
There will be 20 paid on call members of the fire department stationed at Spring Creek when it opens next year.
The hall will essentially service all of Whistler if needed but its boundaries are defined from the walkway bridge at Nordic to Whistler’s southernmost boundary near the Brandywine Creek.
"The department is really looking forward to it," said Fire Chief Hall.
