CORTLAND — Engineers with the Binghamton office of Edmonton, Alberta–based Stantec, Inc. (NYSE: STN) helped a newly constructed residence hall in Cortland earn a top certification for sustainable construction. The U.S. Green Building Council in April awarded Dragon Hall, the newest residence hall at the State University of New York College at Cortland (SUNY […]
CORTLAND — Engineers with the Binghamton office of Edmonton, Alberta–based Stantec, Inc. (NYSE: STN) helped a newly constructed residence hall in Cortland earn a top certification for sustainable construction.
The U.S. Green Building Council in April awarded Dragon Hall, the newest residence hall at the State University of New York College at Cortland (SUNY Cortland), a Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification.
Dragon Hall is the first college-housing structure in New York to secure the LEED certification at the platinum level, according to SUNY Cortland.
Crews built Dragon Hall on a redeveloped brownfield, says Mike Heikkila, senior associate in buildings engineering with Stantec’s Binghamton office.
A brownfield is a property on which redevelopment “may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant,” according to the website of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Buffalo–based contractor LPCiminelli handled construction on the residence hall, according to a SUNY Cortland news release.
Dragon Hall became SUNY Cortland’s 16th residence hall when it opened last August, the school said.
Stantec finished its work on Dragon Hall in 2013 before the academic year started, says Heikkila.
“We have water-efficient fixtures throughout the building. There’s a lot of plumbing with this kind of dormitory building. We’re saving a lot of water also,” he adds.
Stantec designed the $22 million, four-story building, according to a company news release distributed May 23. Its engineers in Binghamton led the design work on the building’s mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems.
Those systems include energy-saving features such as chilled beams, condensing natural-gas boilers, rooftop photovoltaic (solar) panels, and a total energy wheel for heat recovery, helping make Dragon Hall the first residence hall in the state to achieve the Platinum rating.
A chilled beam is a type of convection heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) system designed to heat or cool nonresidential buildings, according to hpac.com, the website of the magazine HPAC Engineering, a publication that focuses on mechanical-systems engineering.
HPAC is short for heating, piping, and air conditioning.
The residence hall’s sustainable features include low-flow faucets and showers with reduced hot-water demands, part of a plumbing system that uses 42 percent less water than a traditional residence hall, according to SUNY Cortland’s April 15 news release.
Dragon Hall’s building envelope works with nature to “aggressively” control heat loss and gain, Stantec said.
A building envelope is a structure’s exterior walls, windows, and roofing, as Heikkila describes it.
“The outside of the building, basically,” he says.
It features sunshades along the south and west facades, high performance windows with integral blinds, and a cavity-wall system with continuous spray-applied foam insulation that acts as insulator, air barrier, and vapor barrier.
“This spray-on insulation is like a foam-type insulation that sticks to everything and expands and it’s a very tight air seal [as well],” he says.
SUNY Cortland described Dragon Hall’s heat-conserving wall and roof insulation as “highly effective.”
An array of rooftop solar panels will produce about 8 percent of the entire building’s electricity annually while plumbing fixtures drive down water use by 40 percent.
Heikkila believes the structure’s best feature is that, through its design, the residence hall is saving 58 percent of the energy usually required for a “typical” building.
Stantec uses a “base-line building” for comparison in determining energy reduction.
“We reduced our energy use by 58 percent over our baseline building through the building envelope … insulation, advanced mechanical systems … the chilled beams, so they’re saving over $31,000 a year for the life of the building,” Heikkila explains.
Besides the Cortland residence hall, Stantec also designed the LEED Platinum energy-saving systems for the new Engineering and Science Building at Binghamton University.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com