Photos and Updates

August 18, 2011:

Part 2: How Toyota Elephant Passage is Making Denver Zoo a Green Leader

Last week, we covered many of the ways Denver Zoo is striving to be the world's greenest zoo. This week, we cover areas on Toyota Elephant Passage you may not see when the 10-acre exhibit opens next year.

The radiant-heated floor systems (above photo) in the Clayton F. Freiheit Elephant Building and the rhino-tapir building will last the life of the building without requiring maintenance and saving energy, money and time for repairs. A typical heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system requires regular maintenance and replacement of parts. Radiant-heated floors also save money because they retain heat at lower elevations of a room longer than HVAC systems. Radiant-heated flooring also will be used in several outdoor spaces, like the gibbon boardwalk and an animal path near habitat A, to provide a safe walking environment for guests and animals during winter months.

The rhino-tapir building is the lone structure on Toyota Elephant Passage to use reflective awnings (right), but the slats on the south side of the project (where the public won't be allowed) are set at a certain angle to block direct summer sunlight from entering the windows and keeping the building cool. In the winter, direct sunlight can enter the windows because the sun is lower in the sky and will help heat the building.

Denver Zoo's sustainable practices reach beyond the zoo. Toyota Elephant Passage construction includes improving the Duck Lake water system in City Park. New water pipes (photo below) were installed within Toyota Elephant Passage to help improve water quality in Duck Lake. The new system will process the water volume in the lake more frequently, thus decreasing the severity of algae blooms, which helped destroy the lake's previous ecosystem.

Here are more sustainable practices inside Toyota Elephant Passage:

• All equipment will go through a commissioning process. Commissioning involves bringing in a third-party expert to verify that everything is operating at maximum efficiency, thus reducing energy demands.

• There is a measurement and verification plan in place to test all equipment after the buildings have been in use to ensure the equipment still operates at maximum efficiency.

• The zoo will engage in a two-year renewable energy contract to provide at least 35 percent of the project's energy demand from wind-generated energy.

• Kiewit Building Group will divert more than 75 percent of the project's waste stream by weight from landfills by recycling or finding alternative uses (below photo) for these materials.

• At least 20 percent of materials used to construct Toyota Elephant Passage will contain recycled content.

• At least 20 percent of construction materials will have been extracted, processed and manufactured within 500 miles of Denver Zoo.

• At least 50 percent of the wood used to construct Toyota Elephant Passage will be FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified. This means it comes from sustainable forests. We're also using beetle-kill wood from local mountains.

• We're trying to select low volatile organic compound-emitting materials. VOCs are prevalent in paint and solvents.

• The project is paperless; Kiewit has digitized all documents.

- Download Toyota Elephant Passage Map PDF
- Download Toyota Elephant Passage Fact Sheet PDF

Download the Toyota Elephant Passage Newsletter in PDF format:

November 2010
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March 2010
November 2009
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January 2009

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