Tag Archive for: learning outside the classroom

Eco Classroom at The Green Britain Centre

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eco classroom on visitor centre

eco classroom on visitor centre

We have recently installed our new eco classroom building at the Green Britain Centre in Norfolk.

The eco classroom is an attractive, cedar clad, fully enclosed 5m octagonal building with an atrium roof (to allow in natural sunlight) and which can easily cater for a class or group of 30 children. As well as providing an outdoor classroom facility, the building itself is intended to be used as an educational resource – to enable visiting groups to enhance educational activities by providing a new resource, raising awareness of renewable sources of energy and sustainable food production as well as providing for hands-on learning for schools, colleges, holiday clubs and individuals. The eco classroom will also assist the existing use of the centre as an educational facility for nearby schools and colleges.

The Green Britain Centre is based in Swaffham, Norfolk and is a popular, learning-outside-of-the-classroom, destination for schools and colleges to learn about renewable forms of energy, new forms of transport and sustainable food through their various displays on site and a comprehensive programme of educational activities. Most notably the wind turbine (windmill) which is the only one open to the public in the world. Visitors have to climb the 300 steps to the viewing platform at the top and experience a modern windmill from the very heart of the machine – and on a clear day, the views from the top of the windmill are amazing! There is also a giant solar tracker on site which follows the sun across the sky.

There are plans afoot to add on additional components to the building to further enhance the eco experience – such as special dynamo bikes which visiting groups have to pedal in order to create power for items such as smoothie makers, flashing light panels, bubble making machines, music systems etc.

For further information on the Green Britain Centre, please visit Green Britain Centre

For further information on eco classrooms, please contact the Hideout House Company on 01865 858982, email info@hideouthouse.com or visit www.hideouthouse.com

 

How Eco Is Your Eco Classroom Really?

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It certainly can be an easy boast or claim about your classroom’s eco credentials and there are some buildings out which claim to be eco friendly simply because they are well insulated (which is stipulated  anyway in building regs if so required) and thereby thermally efficient. Or the timber has some sort of FSC or PEFC accreditation.

Well, we believe that eco classrooms should not only be environmentally friendly, it should also teach children about environmental and sustainability issues as well. If you are going to teach a child something, it is always better if you can actually demonstrate it and they to be a part of the educational process. And that is why we have developed our eco classrooms to feature the following:

  • Living sedum roofs to attract bio-diversity
  • Renewable energy systems such as educational wind turbine/solar panel/energy monitoring board with power points & special dynamo bikes which the children have to pedal to create power
  • Roof guttering and water butt systems for rainwater harvesting
  • Low energy lighting and solar pipes
  • External planters for growing food
  • Mini greenhouses and storage units
  • Mini dipping ponds

The whole Eco Schools programme is now becoming popular in UK schools and indeed there are now nearly 18,000 registered eco schools in England alone. We have successfully installed these type of buildings in eco schools throughout the UK in various different formats – fully enclosed and insulated buildings or as outdoor classrooms. For further details on these buildings, please visit

www.hideouthouse.com

The Green Room

The Benefits of Eco Classrooms

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There are indeed some very good reasons why your school should consider buying an eco classroom building as opposed to a more traditional design and specification. Below we list the principle reasons for going down the eco design route:

  • It goes without saying of course that eco classrooms are environmentally friendly and are doing their bit to keep the environment in check. Quite simply, you are protecting the planet for future generations to enjoy
  • Reduced costs – energy efficient and sustainable buildings reduce overall energy bills
  • With modular builds, you save on transport and on-site build costs and therefore reduce the CO2 footprint of costly distribution and production methods
  • Your school can promote environmental awareness to the school and local community as well as connecting children with nature
  • Use the building as an educational resource so that children can actually be part of the sustainability knowledge process
  • They are usually manufactured from eco friendly materials – accredited sustainable timber from managed plantations, living sedum roofs, rainwater harvesting systems and sun pipes
  • They can use renewable energy sources for heating and lighting (solar panels, wind turbines and air source heat pumps)
  • Eco classrooms can help towards your Eco Schools accreditations as they compliment some of the major eco school topics – RENEWABLE ENERGY, BIO-DIVERSITY, SCHOOL GROUNDS, RE-CYCLING & GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP
  • There could be some grants available too which will support the funding of these types of classroom buildings

For further information, please visit

The Hideout House Company Ltd

www.hideouthouse.com

eco outdoor classroom

eco outdoor classroom

The Green Room

 

 

What Exactly Are Eco Classrooms?

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The Green Room

These type of eco friendly buildings are becoming ever more popular in schools but what exactly are they? And why are they different from standard classroom buildings?

One could simply argue that any building is now eco friendly as current building methods and building regulations stipulate that they have to be thermally efficient on account of their insulation properties (indeed for larger buildings you have to submit SBEM  – simplified building energy model – calculations which essentially provide for an analysis of building energy consumption and Co2 emission rates). If they are timber clad, you would also need to ensure that the original source of the timber supply is either FSC or PEFC accredited or certified – basically this ensures that for every tree cut down, another one is planted.

But you can go a whole step further in the design of eco classrooms to ensure they are truly eco friendly:

*Sedum Living Roofs – these can usually only be applied to flat or shallow mono pitch roofs because they do not work with steep roof pitches. And they tend to be more expensive than other roof systems as the building has to be structurally  “beefed up” in order to take the extra weight of the sedum and its underlays. BUT they do naturally absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, sedum is a natural insulator and they attract all sorts of bio-diversity

*Renewable Energy – dependent upon the power load required for your classroom building, you can use solar panels and wind turbines to provide some if not all of the electricity. Usually however these type of systems provide for say 40% of the overall electricity pull with the rest coming directly from the grid. However you can also earn money from solar panel systems by feeding electricity back into the grid as well as benefitting from the lower energy bills. We have also worked on projects where some of the power is generated by children pedalling special dynamo bikes!

*Air source heat pumps – act both as a combined space heating and air conditioning unit but they produce less C02 than traditional systems because air is the main component being used which of course is a renewable resource

*Guttering and water butts – these can be used as rainwater harvesting systems

*LED lighting and sun pipes in the roof to allow in extra natural light

And of course the added benefit is that these type of eco classrooms teach the children about environmental issues and demonstrate how we can lead more of a sustainable life.

For more information, please contact Simon Fearnehough on 01865 858982 or email simon@hideouthouse.com

or simply visit

The Hideout House Company Ltd

 

the eco centre

the eco classroom

Tag Archive for: learning outside the classroom