UW class offers energy-saving tips for Monroe Street library and others

Anita Weier  —  8/20/2008 5:32 am

In response to the city of Madison's latest budget crunch, library officials recently floated a plan to close the Monroe Street branch library or, at the least, cut back hours and services. But maybe there's a "green" way to save some dollars there instead.

A study by students in Mike Oliva's sustainable design engineering class at University of Wisconsin-Madison last year found that the 47-year-old library could shave energy costs by using high-performance fluorescent light bulbs, natural lighting, double-pane windows, occupancy sensors for bathroom lights and fans and additional insulation. The students found, incredibly enough, that there was no insulation in the walls.

"The study was a good one, to look at an ancient building and see what you could do," said Library Director Barb Dimick. She thought some of the proposals, in fact, worthy enough to include in her 2009 capital budget.

"But now the operating budget is so bad that the whole thing is on hold," Dimick said.

Oliva's "Special Topics in Engineering" class consists of 10 to 15 students who assess the structural engineering of current projects in the community to improve their environmental efficiency. The class has assisted the Hillel Foundation and Habitat for Humanity as well.

"The class has been very popular," said Oliva, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. "It fills up within a day. The students have a tremendous appetite for sustainability."

Oliva's students surveyed all the energy use in the Monroe Street library -- heating, lighting, air conditioning, computers and even coffee pots. Then they created a computer model of current energy usage that could be modified to measure the impact of design changes.

"They took that model and started changing the design of the building," Oliva said. They added insulation, put in skylights for natural lighting and removed incandescent bulbs. They also looked at replacing glass. "The glass in the building is very old and loses a lot of heat in winter. They improved the economy of the building quite a bit."

Costs of the improvements ranged from $200 to $300 for bathroom sensors that turn on lights and fans only when the room is in use to $12,800 for new double-pane windows. More than $7,000 was expensed for installing tubular skylights called Solatubes that capture sunlight on roofs and redirect it down a reflective tube to the interior.

Savings ranged from $90 to $950 per year for various options, but the students stressed that these savings would likely increase sharply due to rising energy costs.

The students also developed a plan for minimizing water runoff to nearly Lake Wingra by utilizing rain barrels and porous pavement materials.

Liz Bjerregaard, 22, who will be a senior at UW-Madison this fall majoring in industrial and systems engineering, wrote the final combined report for the two teams that analyzed the library.

"The recommendations were all things that would help the library and make it better for the environment, but a lot of it did not have a cost benefit, so I put forward the things that could have a monetary benefit," Bjerregaard said. "It shows what improvements the library might put through and how long it would take to break even. After that it is just savings. There is a great opportunity for improvement there."

Interviewed by phone from her home in Racine, Bjerregaard said she was disappointed to hear that the library was targeted for potential closing.

"They get a lot of visitors and the local community gets a lot out of the library," she said. "We didn't find anything that said it didn't deserve to be improved. There are a lot of little things that you can do, and the library would be a really great spot to show that," she added.

T

he course taught by Oliva was the brainchild of John Mitchell, a mechanical engineering professor who is now retired but still helps with the class as an emeritus professor.

Oliva said that Mitchell started working primarily with Habitat for Humanity, an organization that builds homes for low-income families. The students wrote manuals for volunteers describing how to, among other things, use tools and do drywall and roofing. Habitat International took a number of the students' manuals and put them on its Web site.

After that, the class started looking at ways Habitat could improve its houses. Oliva said students suggested using "point-of-use" water heaters instead of a central water heater with one tank. The former are "more efficient because you don't heat the water 24 hours a day, only when the faucet comes on," Oliva said.

The students also looked at cooling homes by using a whole house fan in the attic that draws air up through the house and into the attic. Residents would turn the fan on at night so it would pull cool air in through the downstairs windows, creating an upward draft that pulls hot hair to the top and brings cool air in at the bottom.

They found that solar water heating and photovoltaic cells for electricity were too expensive for Habitat houses. But students last spring considered five different designs for Habitat houses and found that "frost-protected" foundations could save about $8,000 per house compared with houses that have basements.

Last spring Oliva's class also looked at the expansion project for Hillel's student center.

Students considered using natural lighting and installing a composting system to handle all kitchen waste. They also looked at putting a system of smart detectors in the building to gauge how much energy is used in each room for lighting and how much gas is used for heating.

"There would be read-outs at different places in the building so people could see exactly what effect they are having on energy use," Oliva said.

If Hillel decides to use that system, another set of students this fall would write computer programs to do the monitoring and set up the displays.

Another potential project this fall could involve a major housing developer in Madison that wants to create a sustainable development of about 80 houses that would use recycled and locally produced materials and be as energy-efficient as possible.

Ken Johnson of the state Department of Natural Resources, who has been talking with Veridian Homes about the development, said the project is not definite, but that it would be helpful to have Oliva's class analyze energy use possibilities.

Oliva gives most of the credit for the course's achievements to his students. He said when students run into roadblocks on projects, they often seek and receive assistance from experts outside of the classroom.

"They are teaching themselves, and in some cases know more than John (Mitchell) and I do," Oliva said.

aweier@madison.com

Anita Weier  —  8/20/2008 5:32 am