West Salem High School

A 260,000 sq ft sustainable high school was completed for the Salem-Keizer School District. The design team, led by Mahlum Architects with PAE providing the mechanical and lighting design services, collaborated extensively with the Salem-Keizer facilities staff to achieve an integrated design. The design came in $2 million under budget and will save the District approximately $50,000 per year in operating costs, compared to a school built to meet the Oregon Energy Code.

Sustainable design features include:

• Daylit Classrooms: Each classroom has a combination of vision windows and daylighting windows that bring natural light into the classroom. This natural light is controlled by an external shade, internal light shelf and Venetian blinds. When needed, this natural light is enhanced by direct/indirect fluorescent lights. A photocell actively dims the fluorescent lights to achieve the designed light level with minimum amount of energy.
• Solar Domestic Hot Water Heating: A series of 16 solar panels located above the broadcast booth for the football field meets the hot water needs for showers in the locker room on a sunny day. On cloudy days, which have been known to occur in Salem, the system is still capable of preheating the water with the final boost provided by high efficiency gas boilers.
• Operable Windows: Each classroom has operable windows. A sensor in the window deactivates the heating and cooling system when the windows are open to prevent wasted energy.
• Direct / Indirect Evaporative Cooling: The building HVAC system provides 100% outside air to the majority of the building whenever the outside air temperature is above 40 degrees F. (A typical school building only has 30% outside air.) The West Salem design accomplishes these high outside air levels and still uses less energy than a typical school by using air-to-air heat exchanges to recover energy and direct/indirect evaporative coolers to provide cooling.