High Performing Buildings - Winter 2008 - (Page 55)

The flooring for the two-story, open-space commercial retail store is bare concrete with a protective finish. a dismantled liquor warehouse. At the encouragement of the retailer, many employees bike to work during the summer. As such, showers are located on-site. Hot water used by those showers is preheated by a four-panel solar heating system designed for peak summer use (and, therefore, was minimized in size). Circulating pumps, as well as the irrigation pump, are powered by photovoltaic panels. Community Beneﬁts a high-trafﬁc boulevard and an urban highway, ﬁltration of the outdoor air was needed. The hybrid system draws outside air through banks of MERV 7 ﬂat preﬁlters with 25% to 30% dustspot efﬁciency. Air velocity through the ﬁlters is 200 fpm, minimizing airﬂow pressure loss. The DOAS is equipped with similar ﬂat ﬁlters plus MERV 14 cartridge ﬁlters with 90% to 95% dust-spot efﬁciency. Another main design feature of this building is its potable water efﬁciency. Not only does it use water-saving plumbing ﬁxtures, but rainwater from the building roof is also collected into an underground cistern and used to supply the toilets and irrigation needs, reducing consumption of city water. A 10,000 gallon tank stores water for up to two weeks of normal use. In case of prolonged drought, the toilets are supplied with domestic water. No landscape irrigation is needed because the landscaping is done with drought-resistant native plants. It was estimated that these features reduce domestic water consumption and sewage transportation by 300,000 gallons/year. The project was designed to minimize the use of metallic ductwork. Careful site supervision reduced plastic, metal and wood wastes. Indeed, 67% of construction waste was recycled or reused. In addition, part of the cement used in the concrete has been replaced by industrial waste, while the wood used in the construction of the entry canopy, the main staircase and the roof monitor structure, all come from Winter 2008 Sustainable Building Strategy The store’s design was done to reach the equivalent of a LEED-NC® Gold certiﬁed building while considering the cooperative’s sustainable design criteria. As such, the heat pumps were chosen to use R-407c, an HFC refrigerant having no ozone-depleting potential. At the time of the project, there were no North American manufacturers of 10-ton (nominal) liquid-to-liquid heat pumps using an HFC refrigerant. However, one manufacturer was selling such equipment to Europe, and custom units were obtained by special order along with Canadian Standard Association (CSA) certiﬁcation in order to use them on-site. The green building movement was still in its infancy in eastern Canada in 2003. One of the project goals was to design a building incorporating as many sustainable features as possible to serve as an example to the community and other construction professionals. The store was built within a regular commercial neighborhood of more than 40 large surface, single-story, steel structure retail stores. Although this location was selected for a variety of sustainable, economical and strategic reasons (e.g., close to bus lanes and a future commuter train station), it was also selected to show the Montreal retail store community what can result when a retail building is constructed according to sustainable philosophies. The building now serves as an example of how it can be done and how far it can be pushed. • ABOUT THE AUTHORS Frédéric Genest, Eng., is design engineer, project manager and junior partner at Pageau Morel and Associates in Montreal. Roland Charneux, Eng., is COO, operations vice president and senior partner at Pageau Morel and Associates. HIGH PERFORMING BUILDINGS 55

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High Performance Buildings - Winter 2008 Passing On the Gift: Heifer International Headquarters Head of the Class: University of Florida’s Rinker Hall How Far Can You Go? Pearl River Tower The Proof Is Performance: How Does 4 Times Square Measure Up? Lighting the Way: Two Guilford County Schools Montreal’s Retail Example: Mountain Equipment Co-op® (MEC)

High Performing Buildings - Winter 2008

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