The Portola Valley Town Center once Portola Valley School has now become a sustainable eco friendly town center, constructed after salvaging the school building, it now saves energy and other resources.

The building is constructed with various materials that are reused such as reclaimed timber and logs from beaches of North California, beams from school building were reclaimed and used.

Slag mix recovered from old smokestacks is used for concrete in the foundations and walls. This mixture cuts by half the carbon footprint of normal concrete. Window and framing uses the reclaimed wood and plywood certified Douglas-fir. The flooring also uses wood from the fallen tree that were milled and reused.

The lighting system uses energy efficient fluorescent lamps and tubes. The exterior walls are insulated with recycled newsprint and the interiors walls are insulated with ground-up blue jeans.

Natural air flows into building freely by the double hung wooden windows. According U.S. Green Building Council, buildings consume 70% of the nation’s Electricity, 40% of its raw materials and 12 percent of its potable water that generates about 39% of carbon dioxide and producing 30% of wastes.

The water conservation system is the greatest challenge for them to implement, since the area is earthquake region. It was difficult for them to store water above or below the ground. Finally the solution for this issue was brought up by the Public works Director Howard Young, his idea was to send water through a length of 2 foot diameter pipe with a manual cut-off value at one end. The pipe has a capacity of 2,500 gallons of fresh water and it was buried in a small ditch.

70kW Solar panel array is mounted on the roofs of library and community hall. They supply enough electricity to lightings system. It also supplies power to charge the electric vehicles in the parking lot via four plug-in sockets. Awarded one of the Top Ten Green Building of 2009 by AIA, this has it own seismograph which will also be monitored by the computer. With all these features the building is definitely is a friend of environment.

Source: sfgate.com, ecofriend.org, almanacnews.com, AIA Top Ten 2009