Virginia Tech Students Teach Green Building Concepts

BLACKSBURG, Va. — High school students at the Giles County Technology Center in Pearisburg, Va., which serves both Giles and Narrows high schools, are in the middle of creating a house for Habitat for Humanity in their shop. While they have a good understanding of traditional building methods, they aren’t as familiar with green building practices. As such, Virginia Tech students in the College of Natural Resources and Environment were assigned the unique task of helping develop teaching materials on green building for the high school students.

School officials and representatives from Habitat for Humanity met with Daniel Hindman, associate professor of wood engineering in Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment, to discuss how to incorporate green building practices into the house. Hindman, who researches efficient uses of wood, volunteered to have students in his Green Building Systems course provide lessons for the high school students.

The Virginia Tech students, all juniors and seniors, were asked to create models, posters and interactive displays to demonstrate green building concepts. Working in teams of three or four, they addressed the topics of energy use, disaster protection, the definition of green building, material life cycle planning, passive house concepts and construction details of floors, roofs and walls, reported Virginia Tech News.

More than 30 students and teachers from the Giles County Technology Center and Christiansburg High School came to the Blacksburg campus last month. They first visited LumenHAUS, Virginia Tech’s award-winning 600-square-foot solar home, and then headed to Bishop-Favrao Hall, where Hindman’s students gave presentations and demonstrated the models they created.

“The visitors learned how the concepts of sustainability and making efficient decisions are the future of the building construction industry,” Hindman told Virginia Tech News.

Hindman pointed out that trees are a renewable resource — a fundamental reason for wood qualifying as a green building material. The visitors also learned about how homes can be designed with the resiliency to withstand high winds, earthquakes, and other stressors, and can be modified as residents age.

The project is expected to help continued work on a modular duplex that the Giles students are constructing for Habitat for Humanity of the New River Valley. The duplex will eventually be sold at cost to two families in Narrows, Habitat Executive Director Shelley Fortier told The Roanoke Times. If everything goes according to plan, the houses could be ready as early as summer 2015.