Sustainable Building for Education
Sustainable building is now high on the agenda. There is currently social, political, and legislative pressure to ensure that any new college buildings are viewed as “sustainable”. This is a component of your drive to be an Eco-School. Including any shelters and gazebos, as well as new classrooms.
With a lot to consider whilst primarily focused on budget and deadlines, how do you make sure your school construction is truly sustainable, and creates minimal effect on the environment through fabrication, construction, life span; and, at the end of its life, demolition. Our recommendation would be to select timber for sustainability, and off-site fabrication for funding and speed of delivery.
Timber is the world’s only natural, renewable, recyclable construction substance: it’s been used in construction for many thousands of years. Currently with FSC or PEFC certification you can be sure in its own sourcing as well.
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To be able to maintain the focus on the budget at the exact same time as sustainability, we’d recommend you look at offsite manufacture: buildings that are factory prepared prior to delivery to site, and consequently provide massive savings on construction costs through decreased build periods and site disturbance: systems such as Cabinco’s MPL shell buildings. The logs are precision mill engineered and then sent to site ready for speedy, accurate, structure of an individually designed sustainable construction.
The larger the percentage of wood on your mobile horse shelters, the greater chance of a fully recyclable building envelope. Timber does not need to be confined to only the outer skin which provides the appearance of tranquility, but might extend into the interior walls, flooring, windows, doors, roof structure and even the last roofing material through these options as cedar shingles. A good wood solution.
Checklist for Sustainable Buildings
Sustainable sourcing of materials
Noise, Odour & dust during building
Waste to landfill during fabrication and construction
Maintenance and energy required during use of the building
Recyclability following the conclusion of the building’s life.
Carbon Footprint
The carbon footprint is an evaluation of the effects of the school building on the environment. It looks at all aspects of the processes involved in delivering your constructed solution in great detail, and contains such matters as the energy used in manufacture, where that energy comes from, whether it is renewable energy; energy used in transport of materials, including the fuels utilized; structure phase energy and waste; in service energy intake; and, finally, end of life energy use — or NOT in the case of timber, which is reused as fuel.
