Educate staff and occupants on daylight-related and glare-control technologies. Some daylighting controls such as shades or blinds may require occupant operation, and without instruction, may not be used properly, resulting in the building not operating as designed.
Measuring daylight levels can be a time-consuming process in large buildings. Measurements are taken on a 10-foot by 10-foot grid, with four measurement points for each 10 ft2 section. Taking and recording each measurement takes about 30 seconds—not including setting up the grid—for a total of about two minutes per grid section.
Measurement can account for complex daylight designs but does not help inform the design process. It can only confirm compliance once the space has already been constructed. At that late phase, it may be too costly to make design changes to bring more floor area into compliance.
Measuring daylighting with handheld light meters can be time-consuming for large areas. Also, you are likely to need to defer this credit to the construction phase LEED submittal so that accurate light readings can be taken with interior walls in place.
Simulation is the only way to account during the design phase for daylight designs that have many variables such as the use of lightshelves and light-colored interior finishes. The
This compliance path does not require modeling and can still help inform decisions during the design phase. However, the documentation and calculations can be complicated and time-consuming.
A common misconception is that a design needs to have more glazing for effective daylighting. Effective daylighting can also be achieved with smaller apertures and glazing designed for specific indirect light, located high in a space to bounce light on to a ceiling bringing light deeper into a space.
Prescriptive compliance paths for EAc1 (other than energy modeling) do not allow window-to-wall ratios greater than the relevant reference standard. Projects using these compliance paths are limited in the amount of allowable glazing area.
Some “regularly occupied” spaces may be exempt from the daylighting calculation if their uses are daylight-sensitive. Examples include museum or gallery spaces, auditoriums and high-security areas. If you have daylight-sensitive spaces in your project that you would like to exempt from the calculation, you must provide a detailed narrative explanation and exemption request along with the credit documentation. Previous CIRs offer some guidance for this. Note that this path is approved on a case-by-case basis and may not succeed.
