“The Living Building Challenge is LEED on steroids,” says Rich Dodd, project Manager of Berea College’s new Deep Green Residence Hall, with lots of “extra special efforts” along the way designed to make the building not only 55% more energy efficient than most buildings, but the entire construction process more sustainable.

Deep Green Dorm over 50% complete

Last month, for example, expenditures on recycled materials totaled 28 percent of material costs. “Aluminum cans, all the stuff that contractors have for lunch, even the fill dirt taken from the site, scrap wood, 100 percent of the scrap metal—all of that job-site waste is recycled” says Rich Dodd, noting that about 91 percent of all waste material generated from the Deep Green Dorm’s construction is re-used.

Adding recycled brick face

As we walk toward the construction site, a light rain carves out channels in the mud surrounding Berea College’s Green Res Hall jobsite as the industrious clanks, buzzes, calls of “heads up” and putter of machinery drone on despite the weather. Workers busily lay the buildings brick facade made entirely from the tailings of other manufacturers, their yellow safety vests forming a network of dots against the building’s scaffolding. Meanwhile, workers below in hardhats and heavy ear-muffs tend to the drilling of the geothermal wells on the east side of the building, beneath what will be dorm’s parking lot.

Drilling geothermal wells

Geothermal heating and cooling is one of the most energy efficient systems out there, according to Dodd. This is because geothermal capitalizes on naturally occurring temperatures deep underground, rather working to turn the much colder (or hotter) outside air to the wanted indoor temperatures. Typically geothermal systems use about 40 percent less fossil fuels than conventional heating and cooling systems. The Deep Green Dorm’s system will circulate water through 1 inch pipes buried in 50 different wells 375 feet underground. The water in these pipes will absorb the underground temperatures, which normally hover at roughly 50 degrees Fahrenheit. From here the water will be pumped from the wells to an indoor heat-exchanger or chiller as the season demands and continue on throughout the rest of the building to each individual coil unit. A blower on each coil unit will distribute the warm or cool air to each dorm room, each regulated by individual thermostats, so students will have control over the temperature of their dorm room.

Geothermal pipe inlets

“Honestly, the temperature is not going to fluctuate as much as you’d normally see in buildings,” says Dodd, pointing to the highly insulated shell of the building— three inch thick pockets on either side filled with foam insulation  sandwiched by another three inches of air-space. Dodd refers to this as the building envelope.  “The outside air is not getting to this steel” says Dodd, thumping the heavy steel column supporting the ceiling above, “So you won’t have cold temperatures on the outside transferring through the steel to the floor slab inside.  It’s not going to be toasty warm, but neither will it frost up.” Several other buildings on campus also utilize geothermal systems, including Fairchild, Woods-Penn, Frost, and Phelps-Stokes.

Air pockets and insulation in building’s envelope

Says Vice President of Operations and Sustainability Steve Karcher, “We’ve been incorporating sustainable features in our renovations for the last 15 years,” noting the college’s recent renovations in rainwater catchment, low-flow toilets, and energy efficient lighting. “What’s remarkable,” continues Karcher, “Is that while the Deep Green Dorm will be among the most energy efficient and sustainable such buildings in the country, it doesn’t rely on remarkably expensive and risky new technologies or construction processes.”

“Industry-wide if you go from just a standard meeting code building to doing a LEED anything it’s about 30% of material costs,” says Dodd. But these costs are expected to quickly be made up in reduced energy and maintenance costs. The building’s oversized air ducts, for example, will both reduce friction of air-flow and the strain on the air handlers bringing in outside air, minimizing both energy and maintenance costs.

As we pick our way past the giant piles of insulation still to be installed and stacks of poplar two by four boards harvested from the Berea College Forest (48,868 board feet of lumber total), Dodd points out hitches along the way, features which proved difficult to meet the third-party LEED Platinum and Living Building Challenge certification standards.  For one thing, the contractors had to ditch any products containing red-list products such as PVC, formaldehyde, or neoprene. The prevalence of these materials has proved difficult in sourcing some products, and in many cases requiring innovation. The substance used to water proof restrooms and shower rooms, for example, had to be changed, as did the roof paints, and numerous other product. Neoprene is typically in pipe insulation, so they had to find a replacement for that. Sourcing materials without PVC was also a challenge, as it is present in almost everything these days, not just in pipes but in carpets and even windows.

Overhead men are soldering pipes together. Dodd points to the air ducts next to where they work, recounting that one of the most difficult challenges was coming up with a duct putty that passed code. “Its really, really tough,” says Dodd, “With lots of effort on everybody’s part, from the subcontractors, to the contractors, to Berea College, to the architects, and the engineers.” He continues, “Third party certification programs aren’t an ‘end all’ to sustainability efforts, but they are a means to an end. We chose to measure this project with a LEED Platinum Certification. That is the highest, most stringent certification. We also chose to use several of the Living Building Challenge’s prescriptive paths because of their holistic nature…by forgoing substances like hydroflorocarbons, pthalates, wood treatments containing creosote, etc., the building will be a healthier place for our students.”

Study nook with lots of natural light

Many of the ‘holistic’ features Dodd mentions will contribute to the overall beauty of the building. Tall ceilings and relatively spacious rooms, each designed to be ADA compliant, with enough to square footage to accommodate two wheel-chair bound students are just one part of the draw. Large floor to ceiling windows allow a flood of natural lighting as well as a good view of the hills beyond. Every floor will have a large open study area and kitchenette, and will feature art-nooks where student crafts will be displayed, lit by night by little LED lights. Student harvested and crafted furniture will also adorn the rooms and study areas, as well as form the baseboards and decorative finishes. Even the shape of the building itself is designed to invite the outside surroundings inside. An L shape layout, the building has one long South facing and East facing wall, opened up so that the East facing side still has south-east exposure to the sun.

The building is projected to be completed in June 2013. The West wing of the building is currently being drywalled and the East half is about to fitted with the wood trim from the college forest. Furniture will begin to be moved in come May. By fall of 2013, students will grace the halls of the college’s newest, most energy efficient building on campus.

“There’s definitely compelling evidence that nutrient cycling can be altered, and wildlife species that rely on other plants completely disappear out of the picture,” said Sarah Hall, Secretary of the Kentucky Native Plant Society and agriculture professor at Berea College. One of the reasons for this might have to do with the huge amount of leaf litter accumulated by each plant. Several invasive species have the ability to fix nitrogen from the air, and in the case of bush honeysuckle, which drops its leaves several times a season, drastically ups the nutrient levels in surrounding soils. Suddenly native plants which thrive in low-nitrogen environments are pushed out of the picture. There is even evidence that foreign worm populations start to thrive in the soil under these invasives, further expediting the plant’s nutrient cycling loop and making nitrogen available at a faster rate. Increased available nitrogen in the soil in turn encourages further colonization. If this isn’t enough, several invasives are thought to be allellopathic, releasing chemicals in the soil that actually suppress growth of anything else in their immediate surroundings.

“Here we’re kind of a transition where bluegrass and the knobs meet” Berea College’s assistant forester Glen Dandeneau explained. He gestured to the area behind where the college poultry farms used to be, an area particularly overrun with honeysuckle. It is one of the initial areas of restoration focus. By clearing the area of bush honeysuckle, his team is releasing plants that were beginning to be choked out. Several of the plants uncovered include ones not previously found in this area, including ‘Wahoo’ or Euonymus atropurpureus, ‘Strawberry bush,’ and native Viburnum. Finding Wahoo here was especially neat. Dendeneau said, “That’s what excites me about restoration of a native ecosystem. Seeing things repopulate and come out … you know, what you would normally be used to seeing if the non-natives weren’t there.”

“It’s hard to find the positives about invasive species,” said Sarah Hall, “but one thing is that most of them only thrive in certain areas. Bush honeysuckle is really problematic in the bluegrass region here in the state, but you go in eastern Kentucky and it’s not so much a problem because the parent material in the soils are different there. Now you get other invasive species that are becoming problematic there. It’s not like bush honeysuckle is going to take over the entire landscape of the eastern United States and destroy everything, but it’s definitely taking hold in a lot of areas and where it does, it has an impact.”

Since they started the project in September of 2011, Glen Dandeneau and the college forestry team have systematically gone through and applied cut-stump treatment to 20 acres, or approximately one third of their target goal. The glyphosate compound (otherwise known as Round-up) applied directly to each invasive plant stump is considered the most benign of the chemical options, and more environmentally conscious as its application can be controlled. The chemical disrupts plant growth by entering its cell structure and causing the plants to grow so fast that their cell membranes burst. After going through and treating the entire 60 acres once, it is likely the team will have to do repeated cuttings on an ongoing basis in order to keep any regrowth or new seedlings from emerging. In some of the outskirts of the woods, a topical application is used, although Dendeneau notes that this method is used minimally.

College Forester Clint Patterson explained the reasoning behind these chemicals. “If we are sick, like this woods is, we sometimes take a synthetic treatment to get well.  Sure, an overdose of it can kill us, but not taking it can too.  When properly used, herbicides are a tool which can help us to win the battle with invasives, which have become probably the largest threat to our native ecosystems.”

Dandeneau added, “Our major concern is the impact we have on the environment,” noting that the crew has experimented with applying various levels of herbicide to different swatches of woods to determine the minimum amount of herbicide they could effectively use. Even with the highest amounts of herbicide, their total use per acre for cut-stump application was 4 gallons per acre, well below the restrictions for broadcast spray applications at 60 gallons per acre (there are no restrictions for cut-stump applications). While studies of how these chemicals have impacted the soil or brushy creek haven’t yet been carried out, Dandeneau mentioned they would like to see more classrooms research projects get involved.

What they have focused on is the feasibility of eradicating an invasive species which has become quite prolific. Of the Berea College’s 8,000 acres of woods, the forestry team is focusing on some of the most visible to the public, as well as most over-run area of woods around the cross-country trails behind campus in an attempt to measure how much labor must go into reclaiming a severely degraded area. Along with bush honeysuckle, other invasive plants targeted include Chinese privet (Ligustrum sinense), Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), burning bush (Euonymous alata), and scattered russian olive (Elaeagnus augustifolia).

Dandeneau said, “there’s so much forest land in Kentucky and the majority of it is owned by individuals. So anything that we gather research-wise, we want to be applicable to the landowner.” So far their records have indicated that for one acre using a 50% solution of Rodeo (active ingredient glyphosate), they used 3 ¼ gallons of herbicide and 51.5 hours of labor while at a 33% solution, they used 4 gallons and 33 hours of labor. Their project is funded by a grant through the EQIP program, administered by NRCS (Natural Resource Conservation Service), which can be renewed for up to three years. With the addition of another full-time forestry member Jonathan Collette, the team expects this project to pick up the pace.

Governor Beshear has declared September “National Invasives month.” As fall is the time when plants are pulling their resources back underground to be stored through winter in their root system, now is the best time of year to be applying the treatments. Gardeners and homeowners can help by reviewing the Kentucky Exotic Pest Plant Council’s list of least-wanted plants, many of which (including Japanese honeysuckle) are regularly sold in the regions’ plant nurseries.

For Berea College’s forestry team, one third of the way through their initial treatment, the results of their work are encouragement enough to keep up the fight. Dandeneau said with a hint of enthusiasm, “Right now it’s a lot of work and its very ugly, you know, with all the dying honeysuckle. But seeing the stuff we’re uncovering and the amount of native tree species and shrub species that have survived, that’s very exciting.”

Related links:

More information about Berea College Sustainability
More on Berea College Forestry