A new fire station in Norfolk, MA was designed with sustainability in the forefront. (Dore + Whittier Architects)

Barbara Whitchurch

At Efficiency VT’s annual Better Building by Design conference in Burlington this April, a session titled “Cost: No Obstacle to Sustainability” caught my attention (mostly because cost is the first question that pops into my head regarding any high-efficiency building project).

The presentation covered a new (replacement) fire station in the town of Norfolk, MA. Proposals had twice been voted down before the third proposal was submitted. It passed. The project’s design partners, Fire Chief Erron Kinney (www.norfolk.ma.us/departments/fire/index.php), Berglind Davis and Ron Lamarre of Dore + Whittier Architects (www.doreandwhittier.com), and Carrie Havey, of The Green Engineer, Sustainable Design Consulting (www.greenengineer.com) gave us some tips for “selling” such an important project to voters.

Tip: Advocate for an open public process to gain diverse insight, solicit creative thinking, and fuel community understanding. F.C. Kinney emphasized transparency as a key principle in this process. He recommended engagement with the community – the end-users – from the get-go. To that end, he instituted monthly “town hall” meetings, in which everything was scrutinized by the town’s constituents. The planning team promised that all questions posed at a meeting would be answered at the following one, and they were. Gradually, he said, “The attitude shifted from pitchforks to support, and the focus from ‘why’ to ‘how.’”

Through this early process, the community identified four objectives, each of which addresses sustainability.

• Create a “family-friendly” environment, allowing firefighters and others to relax and express themselves.

• Create a space that is accessible, equitable, inviting, inclusive, and participatory.

• Build a new firehouse to last for generations, with proven, durable, long-term systems and components. Address safety issues.

• Control costs as effectively as possible. Align with Norfolk’s green community objective: “All new construction will be as green as possible, within a budget.”

Kinney also encouraged other planners to talk openly about return on investment (ROI), since the ten-year payback for this type of project is substantial. For example, the solar installation on the roof and parking lot canopy creates more energy than the building needs. (It is becoming common for electrical utilities to pay for the excess power that is generated.) Although they did not meet the Passive House standard overall, they did meet what is commonly considered to be the scariest part: the airtightness standard of 0.6 ACH (air change per hour) @50 pascals!

[Note: It is still rare for planners and voters to include pollution, climate change, and human health in their ROI, payback or “bang for buck” calculations; so, we have avoided factoring in those cost benefits here. But, as we all now know, through contamination of our food and air, the unnecessary waste, pollution and inefficiency create a long chain of adverse health cost effects. They also affect our climate, where weather is an increasing threat to our safety and food production.]

Tip: Establish sustainability and cost control for your projects early on in the process. The planning team hired a sustainability consultant, and they chose an architectural firm that would advocate for sustainability from the very beginning. They looked for incentives to reduce costs and did early energy modeling, which allowed them to analyze cost trade-offs. For example, this led them to choose double-pane windows because the energy model revealed that triple-pane “didn’t move the needle” for their building design.

Norfolk is just outside Boston, with a relatively warm climate for New England, so they chose R-60 for their roof and R-24 for the walls. Because this robust insulation allows for smaller mechanical systems, they chose low-energy, all-electric HVAC mechanicals. Each space has its own thermostat and a point-of-use electric heater as backup. The yield: an EUI (energy use intensity) of 32.87 (EUI = kBtu per sq. ft. per year), is about half of a typical municipal building.

“No-cost” planning and design measures include: site orientation, compact building shape, 25% window-to-wall ratio, solar-ready roof, no envelope thermal bridges, fixed windows, waste management, recycled materials, and healthful materials.

The projected benefited from incentivized measures from Efficiency Vermont (www.efficiencyvermont.com) and Mass Save (www.masssave.com): energy-savings sensors, LED fixtures, all-electric hot water heat pumps, energy-recovery ventilation, enhanced insulation and weatherization.

Interestingly, the big garage doors for the engines are swing-out, not roll-up; this is another big savings created by early design choices.

All of these measures resulted in a project cost of $755 per sq. ft.; the average cost of such buildings being $759 per sq. ft. This does not take into account the ten-year ROI or the pollution and climate benefits of sustainability (see photo).

Tip: Explore strategies, measures, and targets developed in partnership with utility companies, industry partners, efficiency programs, and health and wellness programs. For example, the planning team addressed safety issues by establishing health and wellness zones: “hot,” “transition,” and “clean.” Previously, there were no such zones, and contaminated firefighting equipment was stored in the main space.

Tip: Apply lessons learned to analyze your decision-making process, identify missed opportunities, and inform your next project. This post-project analysis is a vital element which helps prepare for “next time” as well as other projects.

There is a slide presentation available covering most of what I write about here; contact Dore + Whittier if you would like to view it.

Barbara Whitchurch is a freelance writer whose Passive House is in Middlesex, VT.