Setting cooling pipes at 45-degree angles instead of conventional right angles. Using fresh air and ceiling fans to cool the classrooms. Installing pipes before the walls were erected.
These were among the measures taken by the United World College South East Asia (UWCSEA) to make its new Tampines campus “green”.
“We had a S$6 million Green Mark budget, but we didn’t have to touch it,” said UWCSEA director of operations and facilities Simon Thomas.
Such green features helped the UWCSEA’s Tampines campus to clinch the Building and Construction Authority’s (BCA) Green Mark Platinum award in September.
The BCA Green Mark is a green-building rating system that evaluates a building for its environmental impact and performance.
The UWCSEA yesterday shared its experience in developing a green campus with members of the National Climate Change Secretariat’s (NCCS) focus group on building efficiency.
The campus also has air-conditioning chillers which are two times more efficient than typical commercial chillers, leading to savings of S$70,000 a month in its electricity bill, Mr Thomas said.
The monthly bill is the same as that of the UWCSEA’s Dover Road campus, which is around S$140,000, but the Tampines campus is bigger, at 76,000 sq m, compared to Dover Road’s 50,000 sq m.
Other green features at the Tampines campus include having fresh air, channelled through the air-handling unit, blowing onto a cooled coil before making its way into the classrooms.
Two 15-watt ceiling fans spin the cooled air in the classrooms, some of which overflows into the corridor, thereby reducing the need for air-conditioning and the use of ducts in the corridor.
