Morgan Hill Unified School District and the City of San Jose Collaborate on California’s first LEED™ Certified Public Elementary School.

In the spring of 2003, the Morgan Hill Unified School District (MHUSD) proposed a four million dollar $4,000,000.00 project to build a new multi-purpose building for the existing elementary school in San Jose, CA. Concurrently, the City of San Jose sought a location for a new Community Center to augment its older facilities. Both parties recognized the financial and spatial advantages of a joint-use project, and the opportunity to create a model green building for future educational and municipal projects. The project team, composed of Weston Miles Architects (WMA), Duquette Structural Engineers, Axiom Mechanical Engineers, SCE Electrical Engineers, C2G Civil Consultants, Welsh commissioning Group, Bennington Conover LEED™ consultants, Construction Manager TBI and Morgan Hill Unified and the City of San Jose representatives, set out to achieve LEED™ certification, as well as to participate in Savings By Design through PG&E.

The main design solution was achieved by the team’s decision to use Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF) as the core structure. Attractive for its impressive thermal and acoustical properties, ICF blocks are self-scaffolding units composed of two layers of foam insulation that are connected by a polypropylene (plastic) web. When stacked, the blocks create a hollow form in which concrete is then poured, resulting in the equivalent of an 8” or 10” solid poured-in-place concrete wall. The internal polypropylene web allows for easy placement of rebar by snapping rebar into place. ICF departs from a conventional concrete wall in its integration of foam insulation and concrete, a combination that substantially reduces heat transfer through the wall. By lowering the indoor climate’s fluctuation with the outdoor temperatures, the ICF walls allowed the Design Team to specify a smaller HVAC system, reducing the building’s long-term energy consumption.

The ICF construction had an added benefit of providing for sound control. The building’s shared ownership required a complex program, the gymnasium, cafeteria and auditorium claim the same space and adjacent meeting rooms were to be accessed at all hours, requiring acoustical management. The ICF walls allow speakers in the auditorium to project into the audience without the resounding echoes typical of standard gymnasiums and when used as a gymnasium or cafeteria the space is quiet with the reverberation muted. The offices next to the auditorium/gymnasium are protected from noise infiltration, creating environments conducive to group meetings.

Through the use of ICF, Los Paseos Multi-Purpose Building earned 29 LEED credits, about a quarter of which directly resulted from the material’s energy-conserving properties. The building was also awarded a comparable number of points for site strategies, such as preserving open space, providing access to alternative transportation, and reducing the building’s impact on the City’s storm water system. The building’s light green cool roof contributed to maintaining a cooler interior temperatures, and operable windows and fans allowed for natural breezes to flow through and cool the building. The building uses 30% less water than other buildings of its kind, with low or no water fixtures like waterless urinals. The building materials included recycled materials and those low in Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s).

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