Los Gatos High School | Classroom + Music Buildings

Los Gatos High School will soon have a new classroom building and music building on its campus in Silicon Valley. The new structures will replace old portable buildings, supporting the growing student body. The music building will provide a state-of-the-art facility for the school’s comprehensive music program, including its marching band, jazz band, choirs, orchestras, and concert bands.

Integral Group provided full mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design services for this project. The HVAC and plumbing designs for the school use only electrical power so that the entirety of the new buildings’ energy use can be offset with solar power in the future, and our electrical designs are focused on the future installation of a photovoltaic (PV) system. Designing a solar-ready building required the careful calculation of building energy use intensity (EUI), roof area, orientation, pitch, panel efficiency, and surface area to handle the addition of solar panels. The design of conduits (size and routing) from the PV array output to the electrical panel must be included. Additionally, there must be sufficient space near the buildings’ main electrical panels for PV inverters.

The HVAC system designed for Los Gatos High School uses energy-efficient heat pump package units to condition the air in the buildings. The high-efficiency LED lighting does not require lamp replacement and thus has very low maintenance requirements. All the MEP systems are affordable, standard, and off-the-shelf, allowing for a cost-effective Net Zero Energy design.

Integral Group designed an energy monitoring system, allowing the facilities manager to monitor energy consumption patterns and diagnose anomalies. This promotes energy efficiency by ensuring that energy-use issues do not go unnoticed. The system is integrated into their existing campus management systemThe buildings incorporate low-flow water fixtures to reduce water consumption in the drought-prone California climate.