Richmond’s Green Fire Halls Take Home Honourable Mention at Esteemed Energy Awards
09 October 2007
The Hamilton and Sea Island fire halls in Richmond are not like traditional fire halls - both were built to exceed nationally set sustainable high performance building standards. This earned them an Honourable Mention at the 2007 Community Energy Association’s Energy Aware Awards on September 27, 2007.
Both fire halls, which opened this spring, were built to North American LEED standards (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and when certification on the two are complete, the Hamilton fire hall is expected to be the first LEED Gold level fire hall in Canada.
The many energy saving features incorporated into the design, construction, and operation of the fire halls are achieving savings up to 60 per cent. They include:
- Geothermal heating (heating and cooling that is achieved through moving heat energy to and from the earth)
- Natural ventilation with operable windows and day lighting, to enhance lighting and air quality while reducing energy consumption
- Solar walls, panels and water collection tanks
- Landscape plantings to create shade and wind micro climates to reduce cooling costs in summer months
About the Energy Aware Award
The Community Energy Association’s Energy Aware Award is offered annually to a municipality or regional district implementing a project or program that best integrates energy planning into community planning processes and development strategies. Two awards were offered in the categories Community-level Planning and Development, and Corporate Operations.
About LEED
The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Green Building Rating System™ is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings. LEED® promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability that recognizes performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality. In Canada, the rating system is administered nationally by the Canada Green Building Council.
