College of the Atlantic Bar Harbor, Maine Green Building - Campus Housing

SCHOOL College of the Atlantic (COA): private 4-year college, 320 students. Bar Harbor, Maine.

ABSTRACT Kathryn W. Davis Student Residence Village: Waterfront student residences consisting of six houses constructed to be thoroughly environmentally aware. Built with an exceptional level of thermal integrity and a super-insulated design, the heat load is minimal. A wood pellet boiler keeps carbon emissions at a bare minimum as well. The six homes, housing 51 students, are outfitted with composting toilets and grey-water recycling to minimize water use. Recycling and composting bins are built into all kitchens. There’s no need for programmable lights. The architects realized that COA students are already “programmed” to turn lights off when not in use. Best of all—the rooms in these student residences are spacious, light-filled and just gorgeous.

GOALS AND OUTCOMES Goals As the first college to be carbon neutral, College of the Atlantic sought to house more students on campus while also minimizing the carbon footprint and educating students on the possibilities of environmental design. But ultimately, the goal of these residences is to keep students on campus, creating and supporting opportunities for community.

Accomplishments and Outcomes Super-Insulation: The predominant construction strategy was to minimize heat loss. Building enclosures were designed, constructed, tested and verified to achieve a peak load of 8 BTU/hr/s.f.—with R 40+ walls, R 45 roof plane, R5 windows, and a remarkable air-tightness of 0.75 ACH 50 .

Light and Air: Buildings are oriented to maximize natural light, with skylights on top floors. All lighting is either fluorescent or LED. There is proper ventilation with heat recovery to all spaces. Central control with occupant activated boost switches.

Interior Spaces: All materials are local where possible; wood flooring on second and third stories is FSC-certified, pre-finished Maine-grown birch. No off-gassing of any materials. Paint is low- or no- volatile organic compounds. All wood furniture is built of regional, sustainably harvested, durable wood; stuffed furnishings are chosen for recycled/eco-friendly fabrics that can be cleaned with water. No carpets: all floor surfaces are broom-cleanable and mop-able, creating a healthier indoor environment. There are also built-in recycling and composting buckets.

Water and Nutrient Cycles: Composting toilets for all but the ground floor (since Maine’s waterfront ledges prevent basements). With regulatory approval, the liquid end product will be surface applied to enrich the campus landscaping. There are also, low-flow faucets and shower heads.

National Wildlife Federation • Campus Ecology • 2009 Heating: Via a KOP wood pellet boiler rated at 535,000 btus per hour. It heats the 19,600 square feet of the residences, including common areas as well as Deering Common, COA’s new 8,900 square-foot campus center, which was created by renovating and expanding an old oceanfront cottage. The boiler also provides hot water to these buildings and will eventually also provide heat and hot water to another historic summer cottage used as a student residence. It is fueled by a 12.68-ton capacity pellet silo adjacent to the boiler building. The wood pellets have come from Maine pellet manufacturing mills.

In planning this project, College of the Atlantic launched a goal of campus-wide independence from fossil fuel by 2015. Recognizing that this project represented the bulk of building investment for the southern end of the campus for the foreseeable future, this project became the means of achieving this goal for all of the existing buildings in this portion of campus.

For a long time, COA has had the goal of a tightly integrated design and construction process involving the whole design team, construction manager, principle sub-contractors and facilities managers working together from the early design stage. This was the first time the college was able to achieve this goal.

It is significant to recognize COA’s adherence to including student opinion in what happens on campus. The original design called for one large residence building. The nature of the final buildings—six intimate houses—is the idea of COA students, who felt that they wanted the experience of living in a home, and the family-like nature of a small community, rather than a 51-bed dorm-like residence.

The following contributed to positive impacts on wildlife and the natural environment on campus: The wetlands encircling the site were preserved. Only minimal tree cutting was necessary. The concentrated redevelopment of the site resulted in an overall decrease in impervious surfaces by approximately 8%. Onsite runoff (from buildings and hard surfaces) is directed into the surrounding landscaping of the buildings. The existing stream channel was extended to facilitate onsite drainage. The college also rearranged the setting of the houses to preserve an historic building slated for demolition.

Challenges and Responses College of the Atlantic always works within economic constraints. We also were focused on strict environmental standards, and responsible to our students’ comments. The community as a whole, through the college’s All College Meeting, was consulted no less than four times in the design process.

The building was predicated on achieving a spectacular level of air tightness. This, says architects Coldham and Hartmann, is practically impossible without the buy-in of both the construction manager and general contractor. Because the design team had such unity, a shared sense of purpose grew among all team members, including workers. The sense of pride in the crew as the air tightness tests revealed their success was palpable. Now, achieving superior tightness is an accepted aspiration by a large group of individuals in the local construction industry.

Campus Climate Action: Your School’s Carbon Footprint This project was a direct result of issues of global climate change. The super-insulated design, frequent thermal breaks and use of a clean-burning modern wood pellet burner enables the college to heat the 51 beds in these dorms with a minimum of emissions.

Commentary and Reflection While this residence is built to the level of a gold-standard LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) project, COA decided not to go for certification. As a small school with a limited budget, we chose to use our limited funds on the housing itself, rather than the records necessary to build a case for LEED certification. National Wildlife Federation • Campus Ecology • 2009 2 ENGAGEMENT AND SUPPORT Leaders and Supporters David Hales, President of College of the Atlantic Millard Dority, Director of Campus Planning, Buildings and Campus Safety Craig Ten Broeck, Sustainability Consultant, 207-288-5015, ext: 231 Coldham and Hartmann Architects, Amherst, MA Campus Building and Sustainability Committee, comprised of students, staff and faculty

Funding and Resources The total project cost was $6.4 million. Our methods and resources for financing included, $4.4 million in private gifts and $2 million in a tax exempt bond from the Maine Health and Higher Education Finance Agency.

Education and Community Outreach The opening of this residence was well recorded by local and regional news media and has been noticed by larger campus surveys of sustainable college life.

National Wildlife Federation’s Campus Ecology Program COA has always been inspired by the goals and challenges set by the Campus Ecology Program. Specifically, we have referencing the following Campus Ecology resources: Higher Education in a Warming World , Guide to Climate Action Planning and Campus Environmental 2008 .

CONTACT INFORMATION Contacts David Hales, President of College of the Atlantic / [email protected] / 207-288-5015 ext. 235 Millard Dority, Director of Campus Planning, Buildings and Campus Safety / [email protected] 207-288- 5015 ext. 259 Craig Ten Broeck, Sustainability Consultant / [email protected] / 207-288-5015, ext. 430

Case study submitted by: David Hales / President / 207-288-5015, ext. 231 Donna Gold / Director of Public Relations / 207-288-5015, ext. 291 / [email protected] Donna Gold / Director of Public Relations [email protected].

MORE ABOUT YOUR SCHOOL Campus Sustainability History As a small college located between the Atlantic Ocean and Acadia National Park, the connection between humans and the natural world has been a guiding principal of our education. With its mission-driven focus on human ecology, all members of the COA community frequently ponder questions such as: What is the relationship between humans and their environment? What is the responsibility of humans to this environment? How can the connection be improved? At COA, the community doesn’t only wonder about these issues, it acts upon them.

Since its first year of classes, in 1971, COA has been a leader in environmental awareness. In just the college’s first decade, students, faculty and/or staff helped to bring the peregrine falcon back to Acadia National Park, lobbied to effectively lobbying to get a bottle-return bill passed, and created the first local recycling center. This commitment to change is as real today as in the 1970s. More recently, a student created Maine’s first-in-the-nation “big box” bill, while alumni research has resulted locally in bills keeping dangerous chemicals out of clothing in Maine and globally in creating the world’s largest

National Wildlife Federation • Campus Ecology • 2009 3 underwater natural preserve beneath the oceans of the island nation Kiribati. And in 2007, COA became the first campus to be carbon neutral.

That a constant awareness of our actions is ingrained in our students can be understood through a story Bruce Coldham, the architect of our new residences, likes to recall: “The culture at COA is unique in our experience of college campuses—lights don't get left on; they are turned off as people leave bathrooms— the test case that we monitored informally over three years of visiting was the (gents) toilet room near the dining hall. Maybe twice in five years did we enter that room and not have to turn on the light. With that experience in mind we intentionally did NOT design occupancy sensors into discretionary spaces because we decided that that would have been a modest energy penalty—why leave the lights on for a pre-set period when the human computer is programmed and commissioned for immediate switch-off?”

National Wildlife Federation • Campus Ecology • 2009 4