Analysis of Fossil Ridge High School's LEED certified green building

The project discussed in this paper is a three-story school building for the community of Fort Collins, Colorado. It was designed to house 1,800 high school students in three separate components. The building was finished in 2004 and completed square footage was 296,000. It is also the first school project in Colorado to achieve a LEED's certification. A LEED designed building seeks to address five key areas of human and environmental health. Those five areas include; "sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality" (Leeds, 2008). The project is owned, operated and maintained by the Poudre School District and encompasses a number of indoor and outdoor spaces. The indoor spaces include a cafeteria, classrooms, gymnasium, laboratory, office spaces and restrooms. The outdoor spaces include a drive and parking, a artificial turf athletic field, a non-motorized pedestrian path, patio area and shade structures. Each of the spaces was designed to achieve maximize fuel efficiency and use in each area, as well as an integrated usage that would maximize the 'green aspect' of the project as well. The school (Fossil Ridge High School) was designed from the very beginning to meet or exceed the high standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council in order to achieve the Leed's certification. A team of architects, engineers, teachers, administrators, maintenance staff and others was established to address the concerns, liabilities and complexities associated with creating and developing such a project.

Fort Collins is a small, but thriving community when compared to Denver, its nearest metropolitan neighbor. It is primarily known as a college town, home to Colorado State University. Geographically located approximately 90 miles due north of Denver and approximately 60 miles from the southern border of Wyoming, it is nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Recently, the city was honored by two different magazines for being one of the top cities in America for workers. According to the city's website, "both Forbes Magazine and Money Magazine recent announced rankings for American cities with outstanding business opportunities. Forbes...ranked Fort Collins #3...Money Magazine...Fort Collins took 39th place" (fcgov.com, 2008). Each school year, Fort Collins see the influx of approximately 20,000 students attending Colorado State University. During the last twenty years the city has become a bedroom-community to Denver as more and more Denverites move there in an attempt to leave the big city troubles behind them. The building type is a high school for local students. The building has three main components housing 600 students in each for a total of 1800 students. Each area is called a learning community and offers core subjects such as math, language arts and social studies. "Special subjects such as science, business, language, music, culinary arts and other electives are housed separately" (U.S. Green, 2008). Also housed separately are the athletic and performing arts facilities. The athletic field is composed of artificial turf to reduce watering, and the facilities are all low-flow in nature to conserve water use.

Xeriscaping and the use of stormwater for irrigation also assist in lowering the use of water. According to the Leed's report, the school buildings are well-insulated and are situated in an envelope design to alleviate heating and cooling needs. The project also has operable windows to allow for natural ventilation and daylighting reduces the need for artificial lighting according to the Leed's certification. An interesting feature to conserve electricity is the use of daylight and motion sensors that activate or de-activate individual classroom and office lighting. "The building's mechanical systems include photovoltaic panels and off- peak, ice-based thermal energy storage" (U.S. Green, 2008). Integrated into the buildings are green features that are highlighted in order to display those features to visitors, teachers and students. Those features include window walls, color-coded heating and water pipes. Asthetic features were also taken into account when creating the plans for the project and have held through upon completion. The site has been xeriscaped with native plants on a lot size of 90 acres that was previously undeveloped. The buildings are a mixture of brick, stone and glass with half of the products used in the buildings manufactured within 500 miles of the facility. Some of the 'green' products used in the buildings include low- emissivity interior paint, manufacturing-scrap ceramic tile, recycled- content acoustical ceiling panels and recycled-content commercial carpet tile. At the end of its usage, the carpet is completely recyclable.