my trip to CCI

One thing the SCA level two group this year were green buildings. We went to go see this building called CCI and took a tour. CCI purchased the building in 1993 and renovated an 80 year old building that is located on the Southside of Pittsburgh. The building is LEED certified and currently is at the gold level. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. When we first got to the building they took us to this room and the lights were out and I first thought, "Why in the world are the lights out?"
One of my fellow crew members asked and Indigo (the lady giving us the tour) said we use day lighting and when asked she said that is when we use the light from the day to light our building so we save money on our electricity.the she told us about the heating and cooling of the building. They have a vent at the top of the building because the heat rises and only makes one spot in the room warm and takes longer for the whole room to get warm so having the vent at the top mean the heat would have to fall and warming the room much faster and the don't need to turn their heat up as high to get warm. another way that they save money is turning the heat off during the weekends since no one is in the building there is no reason to keep the heat on. they recycle everything they use and they don't heat their stair way because they barely use them. I think the thing that i took away from this trip was that your freezer uses more energy when empty then it does full so you can also save money by keeping it full or putting boxes in your freezer