SIMSBURY — - The new, $34.6 million Armour Academic Center at the Westminster School is the kind of gleaming monument to achievement and prosperity that has made Connecticut prep schools so widely known. But stepping downstairs to the cellar of the 85,000-square-foot building is a journey to another kind of future that Connecticut’s private schools are pioneering. 
There, arrayed against the north foundation wall like a Rube Goldberg contraption, are 72 plastic pipes and related plumbing and pumps that are the heart of the building’s alternative energy Geothermal Heat Exchange system. These pipes and pumps circulate 10,000 gallons of a water and glycol mixture through 72 wells drilled 475 feet beneath the Simsbury bedrock. The circulating water system takes advantage of the simple principle that, below the frost line, the earth retains a relatively consistent temperature of 55 degrees.
In the winter, heat drawn from the relatively warmer circulating water is used to warm the building. In the summer, the relatively cooler water draws away the heat from the building to provide air conditioning.
The system will allow the Armour center — home all day to 450 students and faculty — to be heated and air-conditioned all year without burning a single gallon of oil. Westminster is so confident of its new geothermal system that it didn’t even bother to install a conventional backup boiler.
“I know of no other geothermal unit this advanced, anywhere in the country, and yes it’s ironic that this benchmark project originated at a private school,” said mechanical contractor Edmond Macri of Avon, who spent five years working with Westminster’s building committee to design the system.
“At your typical new commercial building, the owners or investors just assign the job out to the architects and engineers and expect it to get done,” Macri said. “At Westminster, from the headmaster on down, there was this strong impetus to be a good citizen and reduce the school’s carbon footprint by becoming personally involved in the design and construction.”
Covering Every Detail
But Westminster is only the beginning. At Avon Old Farms in Avon, a new solar array on the roof of the hockey rink will provide about 75 percent of the school’s needs on its core campus. Westover School in Middlebury and Pine Point School in Stonington have recently switched on similar solar generating units.
The Watkinson School in Hartford is completing a new science center with separate solar and geothermal systems that, its designer says, will be New England’s first “energy neutral” building, meaning that the structure produces as much energy as it uses.
At Loomis Chaffee in Windsor, waste heat from the school’s generator plant is reclaimed to warm the library and two dormitories. Outdoor lighting on part of the campus has been converted to LED, or Light Emitting Diode bulbs, which consume one-tenth of the energy of the conventional lights they replaced.
These prep schools are now competing for green credentials in much the same way that they once competed for students by promoting new language labs or dorms. Energy experts consider the trend important, because proving that alternative energy can work in high-use buildings in the chilly Northeast will significantly advance new technologies.
“If you’re running a private, independent school, you know that you have to have sports fields that are roughly configured to college fields, because that’s the environment that your graduates are heading for,” said Ed Kirk, the physical plant director at Loomis Chaffee. Kirk also doubles as the faculty adviser to the school’s student Green Club.
“It’s no different for energy use,” Kirk said. “We’re in the business here of educating kids, high school-age kids who are headed off to colleges where environmental awareness and cutting-edge technology is high. These kids are already way ahead of us and know that America has been fat, dumb and happy about energy use for way too long. You have to provide the right role models for the world they are facing.”
When planning began on the new Westminster academic building, school administrators were determined to use a sustainable energy source, but they were also goaded into action by another environmental reform. Simsbury, like many Connecticut towns, no longer allows the underground storage of oil, and the school wanted to avoid the considerable expense of building extra space to house a 30,000-gallon oil tank above ground.
Macri and the school’s building committee met every two weeks, endlessly tinkering with their plans. They added features like motion sensors in classrooms to shut off the system when no one was there. The Westminster system also reclaims waste heat from pumps and heat exchangers, returning it to the heating system. Even the heat from the cellar electrical closets is fed back into the geothermal system.
Westminster’s installation includes a computerized monitoring system that will allow the building’s energy use to be monitored and, if necessary, for changes to be programmed into the system.
“We’re tracking everything — pump use, air circulation, room temperatures, water temperature and weather — and we’ll have a complete trend log over time,” Macri said. “In a couple of years, we’ll know more about this building than is usually the case.”
A Smart Idea
When the Watkinson School on Bloomfield Avenue decided that it needed a new science center, building a state-of-the-art “smart building” wasn’t enough. The school, which has always cultivated a strong environmental awareness among its students, also wanted to make the construction and use of the building a working part of its curriculum.
So the school turned to a San Francisco design firm, Project Frog, which has established a reputation in California and Hawaii for delivering highly efficient, modular school buildings, and was eager to prove that its technology could work in the colder Northeast.
The building under construction at Watkinson has three, 1,280-square-foot classrooms that will be heated and cooled by a combination of solar and geothermal systems. Large, dramatic roof overhangs block out high-angle sun, making it easier to control the temperature in the building. A raised-window “clerestory” near the roof reduces the need for lighting. For the building’s siding, Project Frog located recycled California red wood from a demolished transit tunnel near San Francisco.
Student participation in understanding how the building works will be encouraged by an “energy dashboard” with instruments displaying electrical use, solar and geothermal output, and current weather.
“Watkinson’s mission is to develop in our students the power to shape their own lives and the world around them, so why not build New England’s first energy-neutral classroom?” said headmaster John W. Bracker. “In the process, we are saving money, inspiring our students and advancing practical science. That’s the point. That’s why you have a school.”
But idealism and furthering a school’s reputation aren’t the only motives behind the green building wave on Connecticut’s campuses.
“It shouldn’t surprise us that these schools are way ahead, because they were way ahead in computer applications, too,” said Ron French, president of the solar division of Alteris Renewables of Wilton, which installed the solar systems at Avon Old Farms, Westover and Pine Point.
“Unlike a company that knows it can always pull up stakes and move away, places like Avon Old Farms and Westover are used to making long-term decisions about these beautiful campuses they’ve occupied for years,” French said. “They know they’ll be living with these buildings for a long time, so they have to make the right decisions now.”
Visit courant.com/greenschools to view more photos of the new Armour Academic Center at Westminster School in Simsbury.
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