Hi! Does anyone have experience with LEED Credit EQc5 Thermal Comfort using thermal simulation?

We know that all occupied rooms should comply to it but is not clear to us if we should model every single occupied room and its systems to prove compliance to this credit.

The LEED Reference Guide and the response from LEED Coach to say that we could just present worst case conditions in the heating / cooling seasons, but it is not clear if they mean worse periods only or if we could interpret it also by worse geometry/conditions. For example, by simulating only rooms with larger windows with higher U-values in winter or rooms more exposed to the sun in summer; and then considering that all other rooms will have more favourable operative temperatures.

We already have a model of the building for the ASHRAE Simulation but at first we do not modell it in such a detail that operative temperature for every zone is calculated. Additionally, we do not model every zone, according to appendix G some are merged and some are multiplied.

Dear all,

40% of the district heating one of our projects procures is generated from the combustion of sewage sludge and Biogenic waste.

Can this be counted as renewable energy and, if so, what evidence would be required?

Our project is an existing building, that is to be renovated in large parts and converted fron retail to office ues.

The first floor of the building will not be changed by the construction measures. in first floor there is a cafe with an outdoor area, located outside the LEED boundary, on the other side of the sidewalk. Parts are located within 7.5m distance of buildings openings. 

In order to comply with the prerequisite, must prohibiting smoking also be enforced for the existing outdoor area, or can an amendment to the existing lease agreement be waived in this regard?

We are working on a LEED v2009 school project in Germany which is equipped with VRV refrigerating outdoor units for cooling of some rooms so there is no cooling tower, no use of latent heat of the evaporative cooling of water and no district cooling in place. As the floor area is 19.886 m², the designated baseline system is System 7 and therefore the project is eligable to achieve the pilot credit WEpc94 No Cooling Tower.

As the project's design was already fixed in 2017 we are really happy that this Pilot credit was opened to v2009 projects in 2019, as we can now earn one more point without any additional costs.

So if you're still working on v2009 projects, it is possibly worth checking if the requirements for the Pilot No Coolng Tower are met.

Hello all,

It's first time that I work with LEED regulations and can't find something about permament installation of PM measuring devices and whether installed devices can improve the rating? There are explanation and regulations for CO2 and TVOC etc. but nothing about particular matter measurements. Compared to WELL rating system, you can get more points by using decentralized PM devices or at least a device with three characteristic of a defined list to get the information of the facility.

Again, can't find similar or same statesments or regulations in the LEED regulations. Can someone confirm my experience?

Thank you all in advance.

Regards,

Sascha

We are forced to use the v4_v2009_Legal Wood ACP calculator_v02_0 calculator.

former we could enter the product price and the percentage of new wood certified.

In our case it will concern the wood doors with high PEFC certified wood portion. The PEFC certification is a % type certificate. This is commonly nice, because on the delivery forms the certificatenumber and the % of certified wood in the door is mentioned.  So we have imediatly the certified cost-portion of the doors.

The mentioned calculator only wants to know the "Description", "Product Type" in our case wood doors, "costs" o.k., "Sourcing" in our case PEFC-COC - that´s it.

We have the following questions:

1.) in the calculator we can´t fill in the 5-portion of certified wood - it´s all treated 100%. Is there a possibility to specity?

2.) the first rows of the Excel-sheet they want to know: 
Total value of non-wood permanently installed: that would be the whole material costs of the building less the wood doors and other wood? or only the costs of the not certified portion or cost portion of non-wood in the doors ?

Value of non-wood eligible products: that imlpies that we have investigatet for other materials beside wood if they´re eligible, what we have not done, because it´s a LEED v3 project. Or should we enter the portion of not certified wood/materials in our doors?

Value of wood eligible certified products: this should be the certified % cost-portion of our doors

I appreciate every hint.

sincerely Arwid

Hi to all:
We carry out indoor air measurements throughout Germany, including also for Leed certifications (so far Leed v3). Now I have a request for measurements according to Leed v4.1. A measurement time of 4 hours was required in Leed v3. Is there a required minimum measurement period in Leed v4.1? I haven't been able to find anything about it so far.

In a Core and Shell project Office Tower that is over 50 stories, the rule is still measure all regularly occupied spaces in the building? That could mean over 50 floors of measurements?  Or is that in Core and Shell, we only measure the lux for regularly occupied Core spaces. But again, this could be a huge quantity. Is it allowed to do a representational number of floors, say 5 or 10? The same question applies if this was a complete BD+C Office tower that is 50 plus stories. To measure all regularly occupied spaces in an office tower could take weeks to do! What is allowable for maximum number of lux measurements? Thank you.

Dear all,

Actually, German law prohibits electricity contracts with a fixed contract period longer than two years, there has to be the possibility to cancel the contract. Although, the contract will not be automatically canceled after two years, but will automatically enhanced for one year, if not canceled.

Do you think it could be possible to achieve the requirements for a 15-year period with a self-commitment or similar from the building owner, or a passage in the rental contracts, that always a XX% green power contract has to be singed or by a confirmation that the contract will not be canceled? Do some of you maybe have experiences with this? 

If not, it would be a waste, as there are many 100% green electricity contracts available and most of the builders/tenants would not agree to pay for electricity in advance, especially with the currently very variable electricity prices.

Best regards,

Hi,

this question is about a project in Germany, so cost estimates might work differently here. We are having difficulties retrieving the material costs from the subcontractors.

The way we understand it, the threshhold of 20% applies solely to material costs i.e. labour costs are excluded, right? But the way cost estimates work over here is that there is only a total sum per trade. There is no split between labor and material costs so the only way to determine the total material costs is retrieving it from every subcontractor individually and then summing them up. This however leads to the second problem: Subcontractors won't reveal their material costs as it is part of their pricing strategies.

Is there something we're missing? How do we determine the total costs as well as the ones per material? Is there a table or a standard that provides reference costs, so that we would know certain materials amount to x% of total building material costs (for example concrete, reinforcement steel and carpet)?

Thanks in advance!