When Peter Laufenberg opens his bedroom window in the newest dormitory at Plymouth State University, a sensor tells the heat to shut off. When he turns on his faucet, the water runs slower than regular faucets, and when he has to flush his toilet, he chooses between a light flush and a heavy flush.

"It's great that it's environmental-friendly, but it's not in your face," said Laufenberg, a senior. "You don't even know it's here."

Those new and simple features helped the dormitory, Langdon Woods, earn a gold-level certification from the United States Green Building Council's Leadership-Energy-Environmental Design program, a nationally recognized benchmark for energy-efficient buildings. The dormitory is New Hampshire's first to earn that certification.

The energy conservation measures save Plymouth State about $230,000 each year in utilities, said William Crangle, Plymouth State's vice president for financial affairs. The building uses 1.4 million gallons less water, a 36 percent reduction, than it would without the conservation features, which also include flushless urinals in men's bathrooms. Since students first moved in in September, the building has used the equivalent of just four days of heating fuel, thanks to steam heat converted from the energy previously wasted by a school generator.

Laufenberg, who will return to Plymouth State in the fall to get his M.B.A., chose to live a second year in the dormitory, known as "the L.W." among students.

Though he said it's easy to take many of the energy-efficient features for granted, others add much to student life.

"This has some of the freshest air in residence halls," he said. "They can be stuffy, smelly, but this, the air is always being recycled" by the dormitory's ventilation system.

The brick, wood and glass building also offers views of Plymouth's hills, recycling rooms on each of its five floors and a bicycle storage room, to encourage carbon-neutral

transportation. About 10 percent of the building's construction materials are recycled, and 20 percent came from local places, Crangle said. For instance, the wooden furniture in Laufenberg's four-bedroom suite comes from DCI Furniture, a company in Lisbon.

Jeremy Foskitt, a senior and the student representative on the building committee, said students might like living in the building even if it wasn't as green. It's the first dormitory on campus with four-bedroom suites, once available only off Plymouth State's campus, he said. Moreover, students can readily appreciate living in new digs, whether their countertops are made of recycled materials or not.

But students and faculty will benefit from the green building for years to come, he and faculty members said.

"It's an opportunity to educate students on some of the green features and how that has an impact on their tuition dollars and their lives," Foskitt said.

The 114,000-square-foot dormitory can house up to 347 students on its five floors. Construction of the building, which takes its name from the Langdon Park section of campus where it's situated, began in August 2004 and cost about $29 million.

Other state universities will also look at energy-efficient buildings from now on, said Steven Reno, chancellor of the University System of New Hampshire. He said a new dormitory at Keene State College may include many conservation features, and he hopes Langdon Woods will spur students and schools to incorporate more environmentally friendly measures.

"We shape our buildings," said Reno, quoting Winston Churchill, "and then our buildings shape us."

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