Places where people live and work tend to use a lot of water, and hospitals are no exception. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2012 report on water use in public buildings, hospitals rank third in water use just behind senior care facilities and hotels.
Now, the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford is working to buck this trend with a new expansion that will use the latest water and energy-saving techniques and tools. This 521,000 square foot addition, which will open in 2017, is predicted to use about 38 percent less water than a comparable hospital.
This sustainable approach to building design began long before the current drought situation in California made water conservation a top priority. “In 2008, when we started planning, we knew there was not enough rainfall to sustain even the most efficient hospital’s needs,” said Robin Guenther, lead designer of the expansion project, in a recent post on the Healthier, Happy Lives blog.
In the piece, Guenther and her team discuss some of the expansion's energy saving features, including shade structures that reduce the building's heat gain from the sun and moving the hospital's data center to the roof where it can be cooled by a wind-powered ventilation system instead of by air conditioning. According to Guenther, these modifications will make the building's thermal energy consumption about 60 percent less than the average hospital in Northern California.
“Sustainability is a guiding principle in everything we do,” Christopher G. Dawes, president and chief executive officer of the hospital, commented. “Everyone on our team shares in this commitment. It’s part of being a good neighbor and a member of the larger community, and ensuring we’re doing the best thing possible when it comes to preserving all of our environmental resources.”
Previously: Green roofs are not just good for the environment, they boost productivity, study shows and From the Stanford Medicine archives: A Q&A with actor Matt Damon on water and health
Image courtesy of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford
