Photo by Travis Pratt Jim Rippeon paints the fascia on an outbuilding at the Lucy School off Frostown Road in Middletown. Purchase this photo

All these elements are components of a so-called green building, and all these elements are part of the new art classroom building at the Lucy School.

The Lucy School is an arts-based preschool and early childhood education program on a 17-acre farm on Frostown Road.

The school began in a renovated barn, but with 60 children and a curriculum extending to second grade, the school needed more space. Environmental education is a big part of the curriculum, so the school's founders decided to go with an ecologically friendly building.

Christofer Zachariadis, who operates the school with his wife, Victoria Brown, said the $2 million, 6,500-square-foot building covers a lot of ground, but the runoff from the building won't damage local streams the way a traditional building that size would. When rainwater runs off rooftops, it creates a stream of water that can flow into streams, disrupting stream flow and aquatic life.

The new building is surrounded by rain gardens, complete with native plants, that absorb the water into the groundwater. It also has an old-fashioned cistern, which collects rainwater into a well.

Water from the cistern is used to flush the toilets. It is colored yellow to distinguish it from potable water. A gray water system is in place to collect water from sinks and use for watering gardens. The porch roof is being prepared for a roof garden.

The building has a geothermal heating and cooling system. Air underground is kept to a constant temperature of about 55 degrees before it is heated or cooled.

The paint used is a mineral paint from Germany. Traditional paints are chemical-based. "Part of the challenge was selecting material that does not off-gas," Zachariadis said.

An entrance pad absorbs dust from shoes that collects outside and can be tracked inside, reducing indoor air pollution.

An outbuilding on the farm was equipped with 60 solar panels to collect solar energy. That should cover about 15 percent to 20 percent of the school's electrical use, Zachariadis said.

Cork and bamboo are used on the floors throughout the building. The only carpet is on the stairs, and that is made with recycled carpet fiber. The cabinets are made of bamboo, with wheatboard backs, rather than plywood. Motion-sensor sinks spray a small amount of water when triggered.

There's a large amount of glass in the building, including some solar skylights.

"Daylight is one of the best stimulants for the brain," Zachariadis said. "There have been studies that show children who sit near a window do better than children who don't."

The children used leftover pipes to make an instrument similar to a xylophone. Leftover drywall was hauled to a farm in Boonsboro, where the farmer mixed it with manure and spread it on his fields as fertilizer.

"We diverted 80 percent of the construction waste from the dump," Zachariadis said. All the lighting in the building uses light-emitting diode bulbs. It's a lot more expensive to install, but it saves a lot of money in the end, he said.

The school is hoping for a LEED certification, or Leadership in Environmental Energy and Design. Zachariadis is hoping the designation will be a platinum, the highest standard a building can attain.

Lincoln Elementary School and the Earth and Space Science Laboratory at the school have also applied for LEED certification. The only LEED certified building in the Frederick area is the Fannie Mae Urbana Technology Center, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Green Building Council, which provides LEED certifications.

It wasn't an easy process, Zachariadis said. "We still had to go through the bins and remove wood," he said. He also had to make sure concrete was disposed of properly.

To meet LEED standards, a large percentage of material had to come from less than 500 miles away, and Brown researched nearby companies to fill material needs. Wood beams for the building came from a demolished warehouse in North Carolina.

Stones came from a Bethesda quarry.

"A lot of stone in this country is shipped from China," Zachariadis said. "They call this the cradle-to-grave project, calculating how much energy is spent making a product and shipping it."