Hertfordshire school ‘Britain’s greenest building’

A school in Hertforshire has been labelled "the most eco-friendly building in the country" by the Independent.

Howe Dell primary school boasts a green roof and rain water management, but its crowning glory is an Interseasonal Heat Transfer (IHT) system, according to the newspaper.

A series of pipes run under the school’s tarmac playground and the water running through them gathers the heat from the summer sun which is then released to heat the school in the winter.

The school’s (IHT) is particularly innovative as it does not require the conversion of heat into another energy form such as electricity – which is inefficient.

Instead the heat is stored in incredibly well insulated computer-controlled thermal banks which can hold the heat to release it months after the water was first heated up.

Mark Hewitt at Icax, the architecture firm responsible for designing the system, told the newspaper that the same system could be used to cool the school in the summer and that the computers were central to the technology.

He said: "With computers, you can predict very complex movements of energy."