Design lessons

                    View of Buxton Public School classroom buildings

This case study has shown how Buxton Public School has improved on the efficiency of an already low impact building type. NSWPWS's Component Design Range has been significantly enhanced by the successful trial at Buxton of recycled timbers, and of paints, finishes and floor coverings that are lower in manufacturing impacts and lower in off-gassing, thus contributing to improved indoor air quality.

As said, NSW schools are already exemplary in their use of gas rather than electricity for heating, their minimal use of hot water and the fact that air conditioning is rarely used. Buxton has improved slightly on this baseline, in terms of lower gas consumption due to superior insulation, while the heat exchange solar hot water service means that even the small amount of hot water used is almost greenhouse gas free. The use of pv energy (generated on site and purchased from supplier) has also reduced the school's greenhouse gas contributions by a small amount. Buxton's major achievement is in water conservation: all stormwater is collected on site and used either for irrigation or toilet flushing. School records show consistently low usage of potable water.

Visually and in terms of building form, Buxton School is very compatible with the surrounding rural and semi-suburban environment. The domestic scale and appearance of the buildings seems most appropriate for a primary school. Buxton does not obviously declare itself as an environmentally designed school, but for those who wish to look more closely, some features do stand out - the gutterless roofs, the skylights that look like white stripes on the roofs and the rotary ridge ventilators. But because the everyday environment of classrooms, offices and play areas does not appear to be very different from other schools, this could lead to a gradual forgetting of its environmental ambitions, particularly with staff turnover.

Another weakness is that the gas heating does not serve all areas. Offices and withdrawing rooms are too small to accommodate gas heaters and instead have electric heaters, many without timers. Perhaps these rooms could have been designed for cross airflow to draw some of the heat from the large gas-heated rooms they adjoin.

Ongoing building user education can be the solution to both these problems. And a school would seem to be the perfect place for this. An opportunity exists to rewrite the current handover manual (supplemented with other building documentation) as a staff training and then as a curriculum document. Interestingly the school is proud of its environmental education, but this is focused exclusively on the outdoor environment (composting and plant study). The school itself provides a unique environmentally responsible lifestyle education opportunity, that is not being taken up.

After hours community use of the school is minimal, which may be a contributing factor to its low water and energy use. From the point of view of optimising the use of the facilities, Buxton Public School could be seen as significantly underutilised, particularly the very fine school hall. School halls are used by many communities for a variety of uses (exercise classes, social gatherings, etc) and it is somewhat surprising that this community of 1400, which has no public hall, doesn't use it (compared to another village in the region, Menangle, with a population of 576 and no school, but a public hall which is used several times a week). The location of the school, on Buxton's periphery may be one such factor, another is possibly that the school hall is integrated into the complex of buildings in such a way that it doesn't declare itself as a separate community facility.

This links to a larger issue of considering community use and energy consumption factors relationally. For example if Buxton's facilities were used extensively by the community, the School's energy consumption would be higher, but this does not mean that the community's overall energy consumption was higher, in fact it could be lower, as people would not be using their home energy supplies at those times.

But perhaps the major lessons are not much to do with the design of schools at all. The issue raised by Buxton and more generally by NSWPWS's approach to school design, is how can these good practices be transferred to other building types? The answer is certainly not just technical, but goes also to issues of social expectation and values - while adequate heating, lighting, a safe and comfortable environment is provided for children, public school accommodation is spartan compared to, for example, the average office, retail centre or affluent home. Yet it has wide community acceptance. If significant greenhouse gas reductions are to be achieved by the building industry, the energy performance of the likes of Buxton Public School need to be brought into comparison with and sought to be achieved in the design and operation of many other kinds of buildings. This clearly signals a major agenda of cultural change.