Notes on a presentation to District staff 4-17-09
Italicized comments by Art Johnston an engineer who will appear on KDAL 710 radio tomorrow morning at 10AM
Every room will have climate controlled temperature and humidity with only 4 degree difference in any part of the building. But it is not air conditioning. [emphasis E. Kaiser]
ISD709 has obviously been getting a lot of heat for adding air conditioning (AIC) in all the new Duluth Schools. They have been bending over backwards to try claim that they aren’t spending tens of million of dollars to install Johnson Control air conditioning in all the buildings. East they are. There has been no testing of indoor air quality nor has there been an energy analysis of the increasing cost of this AICC AJ
All rooms will have natural light and new lighting systems. Even interior rooms with get natural light from beautifully designed atriums.
All of these atrium and “natural light” systems will be very energy intensive because of high heat loss in the winter and high heat gain in the summer. With such designs, there is little likelihood of energy saving. AJ
The roofs will be flat and some of the roofs will meet LEED “green roof’ designs. The STC will be moved to each high school and these green roofs will be used for their greenhouses.
Apparently, Nancy Nilsen’s disdain of flat roofs was overruled. Green roofs are very expensive due to heavy loads, they are very leak prone (Nancy, get your buckets out), they are very expensive to fix, and usually used only in warmer climates. AJ
The school as designed will have 20% excess student capacity. We are planning for 3000 kids in the school. We are hoping to fill up the school with more kids that will be returning to Duluth Schools once their parents see how beautiful the new schools will be.
20% excess capacity? Apparently the 1SD 709 forgot that a main justification of dismantling the current school system is because they claimed that the current buildings had 22% excess capacity so their size had to be reduced with new buildings. $293 million construction to reduce from 22% to 20% over capacity? Obviously there will be no cost savings here. -AI
