Pre-engineering students are putting what they have learned at Washington County Technical High School into practice. They have come up with an innovative design for their classroom that would be a mixture of creativity and green features. The plan whose idea was perceived from research and a field trip to the Ecobuild Conference in Washington, D.C., an annual conference on sustainable building, was presented by seniors Keagan Boyce, Cody Case and Deanna Molnar during a ceremony at the school on March 17.
The energy-independent portable classroom would include green features such as grass walls, a green roof, photovoltaic solar panels and geothermal heating. Other eco-friendly addition are a light shelf, curtain walls, prismatic skylights, floors made of cork or recyclable carpeting, denim insulation made from recycled jeans, fiber cement exterior walls and fiber cement boarding. The grass walls will provide natural insulation and prevent water runoff from the roof, while the green rooftop will not only add to the aesthetics, but will also collect runoff. The design was so appealing that it earned a grant of $10,000 from State Farm Insurance, in partnership with SkillsUSA.
With the grant, the school has become one of 12 school systems across the nation to be given this honor. The money will be used to buy solar panels and an inverter, in addition to other green feature requirements. This green movement would require $30,000. Other green projects undertaken at Tech High include a wind turbine, which after a year-and-a-half process has received the required building permit. A group of pre-engineering students is also working on a design for an energy-efficient, color-changing roof. The roof that will be a result of a Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam grant will be presented in June at EurekaFest at MIT in Boston. It might be included into the prototype for the sustainable portable classroom.
Via: The Herald Mail