[Bldg-sim] Bldg-sim Digest, Vol 73, Issue 7

[David Eldridge]

The original poster said he didn't have a LEED project, but you are correct that LEED has their own guidance on how to treat buildings and campuses while using 90.1 mostly as-is. Your project may have had unfortunate timing. I don't know if separating the buildings has been strictly enforced before now. Or if some may still pass through in some cases? This is one of the first times that I've heard of it coming up mid-stream as opposed to allowing the project team to help define which case it should use.

Although it seems like a lot of extra work to separate these two buildings for an NC certification, it would be consistent with eventual EB: O&M certification which would be based on separate ENERGY STAR accounts for the two buildings, so I can see the argument in favor.

I would hope that USGBC would allow you to have both buildings in a combined model as long as each had its own heating and cooling loops and electricity meters -- all pertinent energy usage, demand, and cost could be provided to the reviewer even if the model was combined. I think it's a step too far by the reviewers if they forced you to have two separate models.

David


David S. Eldridge, Jr., P.E., LEED AP BD+C, BEMP, BEAP, HBDP
Grumman/Butkus Associates
                                                                                                
 

-----Original Message-----
From: bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org [mailto:bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] On Behalf Of Annie Marston
Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2013 3:07 PM
To: bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org
Subject: Re: [Bldg-sim] Bldg-sim Digest, Vol 73, Issue 7

Hi

I would like to add to this discussion, a couple of months ago we had an interesting review comment from LEED on this issue and it has rattled us a little. There is a definition of whether a building is one or two. Off the top of my head I can't remember where it is (sorry for that not terribly useful) but we had a two buildings connected by a corridor all fed with the same boiler and chiller. LEED specifically told us that because it was only connected by a corridor it had to be regarded as two separate buildings. We had to change LEED certifications and redo a huge amount of the energy model in order to split the energy usage in two. I would suggest that you contact LEED to check you are doing the right thing, it will save you hours of pain and money. This is all assuming you are doing LEED, I know that this definition was not in 90.1 it was somewhere else in LEED documentation.

Annie