Lebanon Middle School
Nature of Work: 109,000 SF new building
Location: Lebanon, New Hampshire
This project won multiple awards from Associated Builders and Contractors New Hampshire/ Vermont, including:
- Excellence Award
- Community Service Award
- Sustainable Building Award
The Lebanon School Board and its Building Committee wanted to physically improve the learning environment and incorporate building features that were progressive regarding sustainability (recognizing that all such costs would be scrutinized and evaluated based on payback).
The decision was made to build to New England Collaborative for High Performance Schools (NECHPS) protocol. NECHPS criteria is similar to that found within the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Program.
Implementing the protocol helped create a high-performance, energy-efficient, well lit, healthy environment for students. A level of compliance (i.e., NECHPS points) was achieved that is unmatched by any other school project in the State of New Hampshire.
Introducing key green elements to the building, including a high performance building shell, exterior sunshades and interior window shelves and light cells for utilizing natural lighting, a 3,000 square-foot green roof designed to reduce heat loss and solar gain, and a 3.5 million BTUh biomass heating plant helped meet sustainability goals.
Trumbull-Nelson worked closely with the engineering firm of Yeaton Associates, Inc. on the design and installation of the pellet-fired biomass plant.
Yeaton provided the following descriptions:
The heating plant consists of two wood pellet biomass boilers with no fossil fuel back-up.
The boiler plant sizing and associated control logic takes into account should season part load heating requirements and design day heating load requirements to maximize the fire rate and efficiency of the plant.
The boilers were equipped with a multi-cyclone dust removal system to prevent the emissions of particles greater than 50 microns. The boiler system emissions were modeled as part of EPA compliance requirements.
A 36-ton silo located outdoors adjacent to the boiler room to stores pellets. A dual auger system, located at the bottom of the silo, automatically delivers pellets to each of the boilers.