A Green Building

The Outdoor Classroom was built with “green” building technology, which focuses on making buildings healthy for both the environment and the people who work in them. The building’s heating/cooling design has a large south-facing overhang, which maximizes sun exposure in the winter and shade in the summer, while catching the southwesterly breeze year round.

To minimize the impact on the environment, disturbed areas surrounding the work site were seeded to keep erosion and sediment pollution to a minimum. Recycled materials were used to make our foundation, and extra lumber was reused for other projects and for mulch at our site. Also, engineered parallel strand lumber, made from young trees compressed into larger planks, was used in place of old growth timbers for the large timbers.

To conserve water, rainwater is collected using a gently sloping roof made of a special durable roofing material called Galvalume. This water is stored in our cistern and used to flush the toilets.