Balamand dorms go green

Abstract

Since their creation, humans seek to develop their lifestyle in order to make it easier and more practical. However, the evolution that was achieved in different fields and along hundreds of years becomes an enemy of the environment. In other words, human activities ruin the surrounding elements such as the air and the green spaces. Some of these activities are the ones done by civil engineering which involve the construction of buildings. In fact, these works cause an ecological disorder due to the substitution of green fields by massive concrete structures. Being conscious about this bad situation, engineers have adapted a rating system based on the U.S. Green building Councils LEED system. The LEED rating system aims to classify existing buildings according to how ecologically they are built. It actually encourages engineers to benefit from natural resources such as solar energy. The target of this project is to transform the women dormitory building of the university of Balamand to a green one. However, since the building was already constructed without applying the concepts of green buildings, many of its components do not meet the required characteristics. In addition most of them cannot be modified. For this reason, in this project we will focus on the concept of saving energy as well as reducing the cost. This will be done by applying systems that take advantage of solar energy for the purpose of generating electricity. Moreover, a new lighting system is adopted which consumes much less electrical energy than the current one. The reduced amounts of energy and cost are shown in detailed calculation and compared with those currently consumed by the dormitory. The study is done for a period of 50 years. In addition to the suggested methods cited above, a steel structural design is proposed as a way to supply the solar system adopted in this project.