It's in the form of steel-gray metal boxes installed in the ceilings of each as-yet unfinished classroom, air pumps for a high-efficiency heating and cooling system that will draw from the school's irrigation well.
It's in the form of towering two-story-high studs of recycled steel that ensure “thermal continuity.”
Energy conservation and environmental impacts are a focus in the $19 million construction that will add a junior high and expand the high school by the start of next school year. The district is investing roughly 10 percent of that in a variety of conservation measures.
“In some cases, the cost up front was more than the traditional stuff, but the payback on it was quick enough that it really made sense to go ahead and do it that way,” said Dianne Burke, who chairs the school board and sits on the building committee.
Nick Salmon, the project's senior manager for CTA Architects and Engineers, has worked on energy conservation construction projects at a number of schools, including Corvallis and Glacier High School in Kalispell. Just this week, Salmon was invited to serve on the new Green Schools Committee for the U.S. Green Building Council's Montana chapter.
He's been heartened, he said, by Frenchtown's willingness to address conservation aspects in its expensive school expansion.
“The Montana schools are a little slow to tackle what we would refer to as high-performance building, where you are absolutely focused on energy conservation as a No. 1 priority,” Salmon said.
Schools in California and elsewhere on the West Coast, as well as some back East, have been in the vanguard of that movement.
“I just think we're working with such small budgets in Montana. It's been hard for schools to embrace that the way schools in other parts of the country have,” Salmon said.
Frenchtown Junior High is currently part of the elementary school a mile or so away. Come next September, it will move to a two-story building adjacent to the high school. A second gym and vocational education building are rising between the school and the Broncs' football stadium. A new wing on the southeast end will add 17 more high school classrooms.
Construction started in March and is roughly 45 percent complete, said Salmon. That's ahead of a schedule that includes some remodeling in the high school next summer.
The current school, built 30 years ago, is 86,000-square feet and designed to hold 400 students. The expansion will add 112,000 square feet and accommodate 900 students, including 300 in the junior high wing. There's room to grow even more as Frenchtown does.
The building committee investigated, then discarded as too expensive, the prospect of installing a wood pellet heating system. The school will still be heated by costly propane.
But the green components “all lead to the projection the school will use half as much propane, even though we're doubling the size of the building,” Salmon said.
Frenchtown schools began looking at dealing with growing enrollment several years ago, but the movement didn't pick up steam until early 2006, when CTA and Frank Locker, an education planner from New England, conducted a series of workshops to determine the district's best course.
Things fell together better than even the most ardent construction advocates had hoped. Voters who defeated a $12 million proposal to move all grades, K-12, to the high school campus in 2002 passed a bond issue for $18,935,000 in November 2006.
The bids came in last winter at nearly $1 million less than was budgeted.
“We ended up with very favorable bid days, so we were able to get several alternates into our design package,” Burke said. “I think at that point it wasn't that difficult to decide to go out and put up some more upfront money.”
She added: “I think the timing on that was just exceptional. Shortly after that was when there was such a big jump in the price of gas and anything oil-related.”
A member of the building committee, Doug Bardwell, is also on the Missoula Electric Co-op board. Through his efforts, the Bonneville Power Administration awarded the school a grant targeting some $48,000 to fuel-efficiency aspects of the expansion, including more than $12,000 each on the heat pumps and high-efficiency lighting, and $7,500 on lighting occupancy sensors.
Salmon said more and more, schools are being built with a quality learning environment in mind. Air quality and room temperatures are vital aspects of that.
On a tour of the construction site Tuesday morning, Salmon pointed to the heat pump boxes on the ceiling of the junior high.
The system's efficiency lies in its ability to move heat from where it's not needed to where it is. Heat is added and rejected through a loop grounded by the school's current well, used for irrigation and fire protection, and another newly dug one. Each unit is independently controlled to call on heat or cool air.
Frenchtown's new system costs $140,000 more than a conventional air heat pump system. But with it the district will use 20,000 fewer kilowatt-hours a year in electricity, not to mention its substantial savings in propane consumption.
Beyond those savings, studies show that paying attention to air quality and temperature pay performance dividends, Salmon said.
“If you're not falling asleep in class, and you can hear what the teacher is talking about, you tend to do better than if you're drifting off in the afternoon because the room got too hot.”
Reporter Kim Briggeman can be reached at 523-5266 or at kbriggeman@missoulian.com.
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