Stanford, Duke adopt ‘green’ dorm projects

Several years ago, Richard Luthy and his colleagues at Stanford University’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department decided to build a student residence for the 21st century: the Stanford Green Dorm.\nThey envision a 50-student house that “would be both a living and teaching place” and would “exemplify the state-of-the-art,” Luthy said.\nThey designed landscaped roofs that collect and filter rainwater for use in laundries, bacterial reactors that purify water from decomposing cafeteria scraps, and geothermal pumps that tap the ground’s heat to keep rooms warm and showers hot.\nThe Stanford project and the similarly aimed Duke Smart Home Project at Duke University in Durham, N.C., are part of a national trend toward building energy-saving, waste-reducing “green dorms.” Since 2003, more than 200 students have collaborated with faculty, architects, and contractors to create the Duke Smart Home, said its director, Tom Rose. Student teams have also developed innovative technologies for the building.\nOne student-developed innovation, the Solar Tracker, alters the tilt of solar panels to catch the most sunlight as the Earth rotates, Duke junior Jeff Schwane said. Collaborating with industry allowed students to incorporate custom-made panels that capture both light and heat energy.\nSchwane worked on the Solar Tracker project and said he really enjoys the venture. \n“I get to do what I love, which is design new things,” he said, “but then it also has some useful benefit to society.” \nInspiration for Stanford junior Jonas Ketterle’s Green Dorm research came while he listened with disbelief to an architecture firm’s presentation.\n“They showed that students shower at 6 a.m.,” he said. “And I knew that wasn’t right.”\nKetterle said he tested his intuition by attaching temperature sensors that take recordings every minute to his dorm’s shower heads. The data verified his hypothesis. Students shower day and night, he said, with only small spikes in use before 9 and 10 a.m. classes. (Notably, peak use occurs three hours later on weekends.)\nKetterle’s findings have major design implications, because heating showers is a dorm’s biggest energy use, Luthy said. If students all showered during daylight hours, heat captured from solar energy alone might meet demand. However, since students shower day and night, a complex, multi-source energy budget is required. But it won’t be cheap.\nLuthy said Stanford is raising funds for the Green Dorm.\nMeanwhile, the Duke Smart Home, financed by private donations and through a partnership with Home Depot, is under construction, Rose said. He said 10 students will move in by January 2008.\nOnce completed, both houses will include lab space where students can monitor, test and tweak the building according to project directors. There, students can manipulate the latest industry upgrades or in-house inventions.\nRose said all wires and pipes will be accessible with basic hand tools for this purpose. \n“Our number-one design criterion is adaptability,” he said. “When we built the facility, we wanted to make sure we would have a smart home on Day 1 but we wouldn’t have a dumb home three years later.”\nIU student efforts are also helping promote “green” dorms. This summer, Residential Programs and Services, persuaded by the Environmental Business Club’s research, will install motion-sensing light switches that turn off lights in unoccupied common areas. IU won’t be opposed to implementing more “green” technology in future building projects. \n“We’d be more than willing to do this kind of thing,” IU Architect Robert Meadows said. “But it really is going to require some organization and involvement from the academic side.”