When the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) got involved with the design and construction of a building it was slated to lease as its Southcentral Regional Office Building (SCROB), DEP determined to make it a “Green Technology Model Project.”
With support from The Heinz Endowments, Alan Barak of the Penn Energy Project assembled a green team to assist with the design of the 78,000 ft
2 (7,250 m
2) building. The results, documented in an outstanding half-hour video (see
EBN
Vol. 8, No. 6 for review), were good enough for a Bronze rating under the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED™ Pilot Program. Design highlights included:
Actual performance of the SCROB, after it was occupied in May 1998, has not quite lived up to expectations. The engineer was concerned about sizing the chiller too tightly to the projected load and, since absorption chillers are only available in limited sizes, ended up specifying one twice as large as necessary. This caused inefficiencies in operations (absorption chillers are particularly sensitive to performance losses from frequent on-off cycling) and freezing of the salts. Only cavity-fill insulation was used in the steel-framed exterior walls, resulting in thermal bridging and lower performance.
And the lightshelves were not modeled properly, which led to glare problems from direct sunlight reaching workstations and required retrofitting a less-than-optimal fix.
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