Maplewood and Unity House

Sent: Fri 5/1/2009 4:04 PM
To: Mick Womersley
Subject: Greening Help


You probably don't remember me.My name is XXXXXXX and two years ago I came to Unity and were fortunate enough to get a green tour by yourself. I am now a full time student at XXXXX State College and a group of us here, being the environmentalist that we are, are writing a grant s o that XXXXXX can become a great green campus. I was wondering if you could send me information about your green dorms there things like price to build, how its green, what was used, square footage etc. Any information you provide could be of great help to us as we try to build a greener community here on campus. Thank you for your help in advance.

sincerely,

XXXXXXX

member of the green solution club and Eco rep at XXXXX State College

Hi XXXXX:

Our new Maplewood dorm finished about two years ago built for $200/square foot, is a wood frame building with the new efficient stud walls, 2 by 6, 24 on-center, with efficient corner stud placement to reduce thermal bridging, and used straightforward and fairly conventional technology to create a very efficient building. The main features are: an "Alaska" or floating slab floor, heated by hot water, insulated from the ground, which heats the building, blown-in-blanket insulation, which is of very high quality and structural integrity and provides R 26 in the walls, with R 50-60 recycled cellulose in the ceiling crawl space. High quality insulated glass windows, an airlock front door, and solar tubes and skylights for day-lighting complete the picture. It runs, like all Unity College buildings on 100% Maine-made renewable power.

It uses around 0.2 gallons of # 2 heat oil per square foot per year. This means that, while it is a 6,000 square foot building, it may use less heat oil than many 2,000 square foot homes.

We have considered switching the heat source to a renewable fuel, either air-to-air heat pumps run on green power, or a biomass boiler.

Our new Unity House president's residence will be the next standard for green buildings at UC. Right now it's in the first year's "field test" stage. We hope at the end of the year that the building will make more energy than it uses. You can read about the Unity House and the Open Prototype Initiative online in much better detail than I can explain it. Google "Unity House" "Unity College" together with quotes, or "Open Prototype Initiative"

If everyone in North America could, in 20-30 years time, live in a house as energy efficient as the Unity House, and if we were able to save the extra energy made to drive plug-in hybrid cars, we might be well on our way to reducing climate emissions 80% by 2050, as most climate scientists say we must.

I'm copying this to Jesse Pyles, our Sustainability Director, so he can follow this correspondence.

Hope this helps.

Regards.

Mick




Mick Womersley, PhD
Associate Professor
Unity College
www.unity.edu/facultypages/womersley/windweb.htm
www.ucsustainability.blogspot.com
www.unity.edu/sustainability
www.ucsustainability.blogspot.com