Take modular, prefabricated structural components, marry them to off-grid energy-efficient technology and you're looking at a fairly radical way to build a fire station.

This concept, dubbed the hybrid station, is now possible largely due to the reduced cost in off-grid technology such as geo-exchange heating and cooling. It also is the proprietary process of Fennell Group, a Colorado Springs-based architectural firm. However, a fire station has never been built using this concept. That may change next year.

Enter the Colorado Springs (Colo.) Fire Department. That department is in the final planning stages to build two of these stations. One, Station 21, is straightforward new construction in a predominantly residential, suburban neighborhood. The other, Station 1, is a bit more complicated. The existing Station 1 was built in 1926 and sits near the center of downtown. Dan Raider, deputy chief of operations, says it is not on the historical building register, but is viewed by many in the community as an historical icon. The fire department has outgrown it and there is no other available land for a new Station 1, but razing it for a new building would raise the community's ire. The city is trying to work a deal to find a buyer that will jack the 1 million-ton building up off its foundation and move it whole to a new location where it can be put to some other use. There are companies in the area with the ability to move the station, just not any willing buyers yet. With the lot clear, the city would build one of Fennell's hybrid stations. Failing that, the city will renovate by integrating the new building with the old one, which will compromise its ability to go fully green with Station 1.

Station 21 is set to be built on undeveloped land with an adjacent city park added. But it has its own set of problems that could slow or possibly derail the project. Fire department officials don't want to build a station that they cannot properly staff. That means bringing on 12 to 15 firefighters, Raider says. The salaries and benefits for 12 firefighters will exceed $1 million. On Election Day, Colorado Springs voters defeated a referendum that would have dedicated a portion of sales tax to public safety. That's the money the fire department was counting on for staffing Station 21. But Raider says the department will proceed and look for other funding sources.

Jim Fennell says he expects the city will break ground for Station 21 in early 2009 and be able to move in by 2010 or late 2009. Raider's time line is less optimistic. He says ground breaking should happen in early 2010, possibly late 2009.

Without the staffing costs, Station 21 will cost Colorado Springs about $4.75 million. If Station 1 is a new building on vacant land as city officials hope, it will cost $6.2 million. But what is the department getting for its money?

Station 21 will have 10,000 net square feet with three double drive-through apparatus bays. The department is considering adding a fourth bay, about 1,500 square feet, for the hose program. There will be eight bunk rooms, two officers' quarters, and the usual kitchen, day room, exercise room and training room, Fennell says. The two-story building will have the living quarters on the top floor with stairs and a fire pole at each end.

That, of course, is typical and hardly worthy of attention. What is out of the ordinary is the planned energy efficiency technology.

Fennell says the hybrid concept is meant to be completely off-grid. That means the stations generate all of their own electricity from the sun, use the earth's subsurface constant temperature for heating and cooling, gray-water filtration, bio-diesel back-up generators and a cadre of low-energy consuming equipment.

“The hybrid station has a baseline or standard for what it uses and is the optimum of efficiency,” Fennell says. “We compare that with what the department would like to see happen.”

In the case of Colorado Springs, the fire department was not ready to go completely off the grid. Station 21's site has easy access to water, sewer and electric hookup and officials opted to tie into the utilities as a safety net.

What this means regarding the hybrid station, Fennell says, is reconfiguring the model. For example, the hybrid's bay doors' baseline would be a bi-fold system in a low-voltage configuration using direct-current motors. In the off-grid design, everything is DC powered.

“Because we have a connection to the grid, it makes more sense to invert the DC power generated from the solar panels to AC,” he says. The bi-fold doors will use less power than overhead doors, but the AC will use more than DC configuration. But the AC configuration does offer other savings. “We don't have to have batteries on site and can feed the excess electricity into the power grid when we're generating it and pull it back at night when we're not.”

Raider says they still are deciding on which green technologies will go into Station 21. Certainly solar electricity and geo-exchange heating and cooling system will be included. Those are proven technologies that the fire department is confident using. They are hesitant to go completely off the power grid because they want to be able to switch quickly to traditional energy sources if problems arise.

Given the nature of emergency response, Colorado Springs' hesitance is understandable. This also is the department's first venture into the realm of green building. Part of the reason for this venture was spurred on by the new city manager, Raider says. He's been there since January and is a big proponent of energy efficiency; he's even created a green team to find efficiencies. Another contributing factor is that the natural gas and electric utilities are owned by the city.

But even with the scaled-back efficiency design, Raider and Fennell believe both planned stations will qualify for the highest designation in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system. LEED is administered by the Green Building Council and uses a point-based system for its accreditation. Fennell says the plans for Station 21 put it just over the threshold for a platinum certification.

The plans call for using a mixture of LED and florescent lighting and incorporating sensors that turn lights on when someone is a room and off when no one is there. Raider says a challenge to being energy efficient is that often firefighters behave differently regarding energy use at the station than they behave at home.

Many economy experts say that municipal budgets are going to be hurting for the next one or two years because of decreasing tax revenue and increasing prices. This economic situation throws a sharp light on the question of how does the cost of a hybrid station compare with that of a traditional station.

“The short answer is that the hybrid will cost slightly less,” Fennell says. “The way that we are able to reduce costs is by being aware of what's out there and trying to use things that are not most expensive, but are the highest performing for the cost. Things that used to be thought of as tree-hugging companies making crazy products are now being widely accepted, so the price has come down. Low volatile organic compound paint was a lot more expensive than traditional paint; that is not true anymore.”

Fennell says that a hybrid station completely off the grid will not have the costs associated with bringing the utility infrastructure to the building. For now, Station 21's solar array will power the lights. If that is expanded to power the station's total electricity needs, the cost would be more than a traditional station. However, the payoff period for this technology is about nine years, after which the electricity would be free.

The other main factor in keeping costs low, and a major component to the hybrid concept, is the modular design. The buildings components are built in a factory, brought to the site and assembled. The repetition of making the same components in a factory will lower the overall cost when compared with a structure that is built on-site.

Fennell says he has agreements in place with manufacturers to build the hybrid components. However, Colorado Springs will take bids for the project's manufacture and assembly.

“We have a proprietary insulated structural panel system that is part of the baseline hybrid package,” Fennell says. “The entire building envelope can be modeled in 3-D, fabricated in a shop, put on a flatbed and delivered to the site.” Finishing the exterior is going to move at the same pace as it would for standard construction. “Brick is what it is,” Fennell says.

The baseline structural system is a combination of aluminum and steel. The framing options are steel, concrete and steel or all pre-cast concrete. But because Colorado Springs is shooting for the top LEED rating, Fennell will have to consider where the materials are coming from and their reuse. For Colorado Springs, concrete framing may yield the most LEED points.

Modular buildings are nothing new, although they sometimes get a bad rap. “Around the United States, when people think of prefabricated building, they think of mobile homes, which is not anywhere near what we are talking about,” Fennell says. Countries in Europe and Asia are using modular construction for residential, business and municipal buildings with a great deal of success, he says. They also are rolling energy-efficient technology into some of these buildings, much like Fennell's hybrid.

Fennell says he's been interested in this type of building since the mid 1990s, but high cost and low public acceptance kept it from making good business sense. Now, Fennell and the Colorado Springs Fire Department are taking this first step together with a modular, closed-loop renewable-energy system fire station.

Snap Shot: Colorado Springs

Population	392,164
Area	193 square miles
Street Miles	1,542
Parkland	13,590 acres
Average Annual Rainfall	17.4 inches
Number of Fire Stations	20
Emergency Responses (2007)	49,465
Responses within 8 Minutes	90%
Personnel	520
2007 Per Capita Costs for Fire Services	$136.91
Average Cost per Incident	$1,017