Start by reducing the building’s energy load. The smaller the load, the less renewable energy you have to generate to meet the credit thresholds, which saves money and might expand the options you can use.
The refrigerant charge is typically calculated automatically in the LEED Online submittal template. It is the relationship between how much refrigerant is needed (in pounds) and the cooling capacity (in tons) of the equipment.
Even one piece of equipment can tip your calculations to compliance or noncompliance. Use the calculator in the LEED Online submittal template to run calculations from the beginning of HVAC system selection (note that your project has to be registered through LEED Online to download those forms). This gives a sense of how far from compliance a system may be; teams then get a better idea of how significant a change may be required. Note that annual leakage and end-of-life refrigerant loss rates are set to defaults but can be edited if needed.
If your project building is connected to a district chilled-water system, you have to include all the chillers in that system in the calculations, even if they are outside your project’s scope or control. As a rule of thumb, if the system is serving your LEED project it should be included in calculations, whether it is within your project scope of work or not.
Use the calculator built into the LEED Online submittal template to help facilitate decision-making. Re-run comparisons between the baseline and design-case water budgets until the final selections of water fixtures and strategies have been made and the project’s water-reduction goals are satisfied.
You can earn an Exemplary Performance point through IDc1 for a 40% reduction. To help you meet this threshold, you can include appliance and process water in the calculations, even though that’s not allowed for the standard credit calculations.