| The Washington Veterans Home in Retsil, near Port Orchard, recently received a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The new facility, which provides skilled nursing care and is operated by the state’s Department of Veterans Affairs, opened in March. The spacious facility includes an administrative building that is curved to take advantage of the site’s hillside topography and eight resident wings, each connected to the main building. The wings have access to the “ground floor” on both first and second levels. The campus also has a kitchen building and a historic church.
The Retsil veterans’ home was first opened nearly 100 years ago. The agency decided to build the new facility using green methods a few years before the state started focusing on sustainable construction for all its new buildings.
“We had one chance to do a building in a hundred years — we thought while doing that, we should be conscious of the environment,” says Gary Condra, Chief Financial Officer for the department.
The most prominent green feature is the facility’s natural cooling system. Designed to take advantage of the breeze off Sinclair Inlet, the system includes operational windows that open at the top and bottom to create convection, as well as outdoor shades and high ceilings. The only air conditioning is run in the administration building, the pharmacy and the kitchen.
One of the advantages of the natural cooling, besides energy cost savings, is that residents can control their own environments in each room. “It provides the residents a choice, and makes the environment much more like home,” Condra says.
The concept was so new, it took 10 months for the design firm, Seattle-based NBBJ, to demonstrate its effectiveness to the Health Department.
The buildings have ample natural lighting and a great number of view windows. Other environmentally friendly features include a reception desk made of compressed sunflower seeds, bamboo flooring, low-VOC paints, reflective paint color for the roof, and certified-renewable maple handrails. An appealing bioswale is used for water runoff from the parking lot area. Native and fast-growing plants are used, with many of them planted especially to provide shade for additional cooling.
Nearly 90 percent of the construction waste was recycled, adding extra points for the LEED certification, which rates aspects ranging from site selection to energy performance.
Condra says the main goal for the facility was to provide a homelike, comfortable environment for the residents — thus features such as a living room area and courtyards are part of the design. The choice of materials, however, contributed to that goal by providing residents with a healthier environment.
The state-of-the-art building includes a staff training room with views of Sinclair Inlet. “We needed to take care of residents but also needed to take care of staff,” he says.
The VA is looking at the 240-bed center as a model, Condra says. | 