The 100 Maine students enrolled at the Friends School of Portland are still taking it all in, but so far seem to be enjoying life in their new 15,000-sq.-ft. home, one of a very few Passivhaus school buildings in the country and a far cry from the leased cinderblock space they left behind.
There are bright colors, the resinous smell of pine in the air, 18 acres of woodlands to explore out back, and an iPad mounted in a hallway where students can track how much electricity the school’s solar panels are generating.
“It’s really an easy building to be in,” says head of school Jenny Rowe. “There’s a lot of space, there’s a lot of light. It doesn’t feel full. It’s quiet. It’s so well insulated that if a door is closed and you have people talking loudly in the hallway, the people in the classroom can’t hear anything. It just works really well.”
The Quaker day school thought it would have 90 pre-kindergarten to eighth grade students when it opened this fall. Instead, there are 100. More interest in the school, generated in part by news coverage of the construction project, has brought more people to open houses and the admissions office, Rowe said. Without commandeering space used for other programs, the school could squeeze in only two more students.
Checking in: Students at the new Friends of Portland school can use an iPad and an app called Solar Log to see how much electricity the school’s solar panels are generating. (Photo: Jenny Rowe)
On track for net-zero energy
The $3.75 million building, designed by the Portland architectural firm Kaplan Thompson, includes a roof-mounted photovoltaic array with a rated capacity of 36kw–enough, designers hoped, to generate all the electricity the school would need on an annual basis. So far, that seems to be working.
“I think we’re on track to be net-zero, according to the people we’ve been talking with at Revision Energy,” Rowe said. “But what I have learned is that net-zero is something that works itself out in the course of a year.”
Students can keep track by using an iPad that’s mounted in a hallway. Using an app called Solar-Log, they can access an energy dashboard to see how much power the solar panels have generated, by the day, month or year, Rowe said, and get an idea of how much money the school is saving. One drawback is the dashboard doesn’t track the use of electricity, just the solar output.
Even so, it seems to be a popular spot for student, who found a way to unlock the device and use it to take selfies.
“There are a lot of smudgy fingerprints on it,” Rowe says.
Low energy consumption is more than a gimmick for the school, as Rowe explained last year. With low energy costs, the school’s budget is more predictable, “pretty amazing for a small school where three kids difference in enrollment can make or break a budget,” Rowe said at the time.
Solar energy and the high-performance features of the building, however, are not part of the school’s official curriculum this year. Courses are planned on a two-year rotation, so students had some classroom instruction on solar energy last year and can look forward to it again in the future. In the meantime, Rowe said, students are encouraged to practice environmental stewardship; first and second graders responded by devising a school-wide program to compost paper towels.
A connection with the forest around them: Tree-trunk posts support a roof overhang and help students connect with the 18 acres of woodlands on school property. The posts came from oak trees taken from the site.
What the students say they like
School administrators will like the low or nonexistent energy bills, but students are finding pleasure in simple things–colors and smells and the chance to play in one of the three fields out back, or roam the woodlands behind the school.
Rowe said she had recently been polling students about what in particular they like about the school. One of the eighth graders said it was the fresh-pine smell of the building that was most appealing, Rowe said, in contrast to less than ideal air quality in their old school. Other children remarked on the colors of different building components, including the orange stairs. “It makes them feel happy,” Rowe said.
One eighth grader was especially taken with the dual-flush toilets.
There also is the sense of being active participants in shaping their school-day worlds, unlike their experience in the space they had been leasing from the stated.
“We couldn’t build anything, couldn’t paint anything, couldn’t even change a light bulb because it was a lease with the state,” she said. “Now, we can actually decide we want to work on trails, or learn how to use the woods. The first month, they wanted to pick elderberries or pull up the ferns to make beds with. So we talked about how we treat the land, and what are the rules we can agree on.”
Students at the Friends School also are likely to be more comfortable than their peers in public schools. Rowe recalled that in early September, unusually hot weather meant temperatures of 90 degrees F. Some public schools in the area closed, and even at the Friends School it was too hot to go out back and eat the picnic tables.
Inside, Rowe said, “it was just great.”
Waiting for certification
Naomi Beal, who headed the building committee and is director of PassivhausMAINE, said the biggest challenge in construction was not the building itself but the weather. Maine had an unusually cold and snowy winter, with 100 inches or so of snow in the Portland area. It took some effort to keep the job site cleared of snow, she said, but a big push by the builder, the Warren Construction Group, kept the project on track.
“It was remarkably trouble-free to a large degree,” Beal said.
The school is still awaiting its Passivhaus certification, but Beal said no one is expecting a problem getting it. Airtightness, for example, tested in the 0.3 ACH50 range, roughly half of what’s allowed under Passivhaus guidelines.
The building, she added, is working as it was designed.
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The Friends School of Portland a few miles north of Portland, Maine, in the town of Cumberland opened its doors to students in September. Still awaiting certification, it would become one of only a few Passivhaus school buildings in the country and is operating at near capacity. (Photo: Naomi C.O. Beal)
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Bright colors in the school's stairway are one of the features students have mentioned when asked what they especially like about their new school. (Photo: Naomi C.O. Beal)
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Several typos, but my favorite was, "...it was too hot to go out back and eat the picnic tables." Yes, my appetite decreases on hot days, too, even if tasty picnic tables are on the menu.
On a technical point, "...they can access an energy dashboard to see how much power the solar panels have generated..." Power isn't generated, but energy IS generated (converted from light energy to electrical and heat energy by the panels).
Power is an instantaneous value that varies up and down depending upon the amount of light hitting the panels at that instant. Energy is cumulative, where each of those instantaneous values, let's say each second, is added up over a selected longer time period, such as a day, month, or year. Power can go up and down over the long period but Energy generated during the long period can only go up.
In terms of a "Power" company, another way to think about it is that you can buy Energy but not Power. Power is a rate that just measures how rapidly you are buying it. "Power" companies sell Energy, NOT Power.
How do Power, time, and Energy relate in this topic? P = E/t. E = Pt. Energy is measured in joules while Power is measured in J/s or watts. On the large scale of the school, Energy is measured in kilowatt hours, kWh, and Power is in kilowatts, kW.
The distinction between Energy and Power is a picky point, which is even used incorrectly at times, yes, even by textbooks, electricians, engineers, and scientists, but it is something kids in a school should learn since Energy, and the RATE at which it is used, will become more and more important in their future.