The Wild Center offers a complete self-guided or staff-led tour of its energy-saving and other green systems.

Here are some of the systems you can see at work.  

Night lights

In the Adirondacks you can still see the Milky Way. Animals can too. A dark night for creatures that are nocturnal or use celestial navigation is one thing that makes the Adirondacks a more natural place. Exterior lighting fixtures can unintentionally fill the night sky with stray light, pushing nature away to the darker edges. The light fixtures at The Wild Center are designed to eliminate stray light by using reflectors that focus the light downward, keeping the night sky dark.  

 Solar power

The light from the Sun has enough energy to illuminate half the Earth.The 190 solar panels on the roof at The Wild Center's BioBuilding generate enough energy to run the whole BioBuilding operations.

 Renewable heat

The Wild Center expects to make a huge cut in its heating bill this year with a pioneering new heating system that will use renewables to heat the entire 54,000 square foot complex.

 The  system will  integrate a solar tube hot water system with a pellet furnace (the picture above shows pellets being produced). The new boiler system is the first highly efficient, commercial-sized, gasification wood-pellet boiler of its kind and size manufactured and installed in New York State. (FAQs available here.)

 Clarkson University will evaluate the energy-efficiency and emissions performance of the entire heating system. This evaluation will provide scientific information useful to decision makers developing renewable energy strategies, while also serving as a model for others looking to evaluate ways to heat with renewable fuels in an efficient manner.

 In the Adirondacks the most abundant and inexpensive renewable fuel is wood. However, traditional wood burning stoves, some common commercial wood boilers and, more recently, outdoor wood boilers suffer from low efficiency and high levels of pollution from incomplete combustion. The planned project offers a very clean-burning, highly efficient alternative use of wood fuel.

 

The successful installation and use of the boiler system has the potential for a positive economic impact on the Adirondacks. By harvesting the “waste” in logging and sawmill operations to create wood pellets and then selling that back to local institutions the money that is currently sent abroad for the purchase of fossil fuels is kept in the Adirondacks where it can potentially lead to job creation.

Water cisterns

Water costs a lot of money. It needs to be pumped, filtered, delivered and often disposed of. Catching rain water for use cuts out lots of steps. The sun and gravity does all the delivery work. The Wild Center uses big rainwater cisterns to cut the water it needs to buy.

 Recycled flooring

One ingredient in the rubberized flooring used at The Wild Center is old tires. Every year 290 million tires leave the road in the U.S. More than 90 percent of them go on to lead productive second lives. 

 Locally sourced materials

You can see examples of local buying at The Wild Center. Buying local keeps money in the regional economy, and cuts down on lots of costs. The wood siding on The Wild Center was  harvested and milled in Tupper Lake and the stone blocks quarried in nearby Warrensburg. Most contractors can help you source locally if you ask. 

Green roof

t’s such a good idea that it might be the standard roof of the future. Plants insulate. Studies show that the insulating benefits of green roofs can reduce annual heating and cooling costs by as much as 30 percent. In a typical Adirondack town rain running off roofs can  overwhelm sewer systems, causing them to overflow and spill untreated waste. Green roofs retain as much as 80 percent of the rain that falls on them. You can see details of how to build a green roof on the New Path tour.

 Grey  water use

The Living River exhibit inside The Wild Center has weekly scheduled water changes. Some of the water goes into Greenleaf Pond where it joins the natural water cycle. Diverting water that would have gone to a mechanized treatment facility helps cut energy use.  

 Free interior lighting

More than 95 percent of the spaces inside The Wild Center  have a direct line of sight to the Adirondacks outside. Having free light cuts electric expenses, and health-care costs. Multiple studies show that people who work in places where they can see the outside world and real sunlight are healthier and more productive. (Even on a cloudy day, not that we ever have those in the Adirondacks.)

Site reclaimation

The Wild Center was built in an old sandpit. Choosing the spot on the prperty that had already been disturbed by surface mining helped bring life to a part of the site that had very little.

Living stormwater systems

You can actually build to make more nature. One reason there are so many birds around The Wild Center is because the flood system at The Wild Center is designed to create temporary pools that animals and insects that prefer not to leave their young in fishy waters use to reproduce. The detention ponds hold excess water but they were also designed to be a habitat. All the new life in the ponds attracts more life to the area.

 Cheap plantings

Because native species are adapted to this place, they require much less maintenance than non-natives. That means fewer resources used to keep things alive. More than 95 percent of The Wild Center’s landscape plantings are natives.  

Non-smelly zero flush toilets

Zero gallons per flush. That’s how much water The Wild Center's composting toilet use.  A mixture of aerobic bacteria and fungi that break the waste down and reduce it to a dry, odorless, soil-like material that’s 25 percent of its original volume. Clean water is a precious resource even in the Adirondacks. Take a look at your tax bill and see how much goes into sewage treatment each year. The average home toilet flushes 16,000 gallons a year. Composting toilets can cut your costs for waste water treatment.

 Green parking systems

You can see how a big green parking lot works on the back two lots at The Wild Center. The lifespan of the materials used at The Wild Center is three times that of pavement. Typical blacktop lasts around eight years and in most areas blacktop is considered so toxic that getting rid of it requires a disposal permit. Pavers last closer to 25 years and can be recycled. An ordinary parking lot has no effective system to deal with contaminants. Paver lots allow natural processes to do their thing, including filtering out pollutants such as hydrocarbons and nitrogen. They cut water treatment costs and even snow removal expenses.