From Seth O’Bryan, Living Building class instructor: This Monday, November 16th, Abby McHugh-Grifa and Sue Hughes-Smith of the Rochester People’s Climate Coalition (RPCC) spoke to the Living Building class about climate change and the ways in which they can be activists in addressing it locally. Abby and Sue shared...
From the Living Building Class members: With eye-popping art, the Living Building Class has redesigned the west end of Flag Hall in the Commons. We have included solar facts and jokes, weekly net energy reports, the weather, and the news (local and within the community). We have done this to...
We were honored to have Dr. Susan Spencer engage with our students and faculty on Thursday, October 16th, and were inspired by the information she shared during her mini-residency at Harley. She concluded her stay with a presentation to the public in the evening on transitioning from fossil fuels to...
One major goal of the Commons is for the students to manage the building toward net zero energy use. Living Building is an upper school elective course in which students look at data about energy use in the Commons and work with community members to be more energy efficient. This...
Members of the Administrative Team, Commons Leadership, and maintenance received a lovely invitation via email upon their return from spring break: “Dear Commons Team, The Living Building class would like to invite you on Thursday, April 9th at 8:20 AM for an interactive presentation. Over this past trimester we have...
Summary of Net Zero Commons Trial–by Seth O’Bryan Below is a table summarizing net energy use in the Commons from March 2-6, 2015. An important caveat is that this doesn’t include the energy use of the compressors, which drive the heating and cooling. The compressors are the biggest energy users...
Guest author: Cameron Yudelson For the last several weeks the students of the Living Building class have been working on a net zero energy project. The goal of this project is to conserve as much energy in the Commons. The ultimate goal is for energy use to match the amount...
The 3A and 3B classrooms went off the grid this week as the culminating event in their study of electricity, circuits, and solar power. What started as an inquiry-based project on alternative sources of energy grew into a fantastic, authentic challenge to utilize solar energy to power individual desk lamps...
We are excited to unveil the New and Improved (and much more user-friendly) Commons Control website! This site has been functional and has been referenced earlier in this blog (here and here), but the new website has improvements which invite data analysis, provide background on the systems, and house an...
There are two solar chimneys in the greenhouse. The idea of the chimneys is to use convection principles to circulate hot air from the greenhouse into the classrooms, so that we use the heating and cooling units less. The solar chimneys use passive heat, which means that we are saving...
