Forum discussion
NC-2009 WEp1: Water Use Reduction—20% Reduction
Our project has 2 out of 10 shower stalls that are considered ADA shower stalls. They consist of having a fixed 1.0 gpm shower head and a diverter valve to switch to the 1.125 gpm hand held shower. How do we account for the difference in gpm on the WEp1 form for these two ADA showers?
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Michelle Rosenberger
PartnerArchEcology
522 thumbs up
March 16, 2014 - 3:38 pm
Hi Lisa,
We generally set up a separate fixture group for the ADA showers and assign a default 5% of the FTE population to them.
Michelle Robinson Schwarting
148 thumbs up
March 17, 2014 - 8:53 am
And if the shower stall can be switched between two flow rates, the LEED Reviewers will likely require you to assume worst-case scenario for water usage -- so assume they'll be using the higher flow rate all the time for these two shower stalls.
Erin Holdenried
Sustainability Architect125 thumbs up
March 17, 2014 - 1:40 pm
I would set up two fixture groups, one for the ADA shower & one for the regular shower. If the ADA showers are accessible to the whole building population, you should assign a percentage of the population to each shower fixture group based on the ratio of ADA showers to regular showers.
Lisa Marshall
Principal/Green Building ConsultantSage Green Strategies Inc.
6 thumbs up
March 17, 2014 - 3:00 pm
Thanks so much for your help with this, one final clarification. The plan is to create two user groups - 1)Non-ADA showers - use the base building user FTE count. 2) ADA shower stalls - Use the ADA user group at 5% of FTE at the higher gpm use. Correct? If this is the case, my only question would be that in most cases, non-ADA building users do tend to use the ADA showers and it would appear that this use would not be accounted for in the above strategy. (maybe this is ok??)
Michelle Robinson Schwarting
148 thumbs up
March 17, 2014 - 3:11 pm
I think it really depends -- in some buildings the ADA showers basically NEVER get used. In other buildings there is enough demand for showers that they may need to get used frequently. It also depends on what the difference is between the ADA showers and the standard showers and whether or not people will shy away from using them for that reason. Therefore it really depends on the specific installation.
What is the flow rate for the shower heads in the standard showers? If the standard showers have the lower flow rate it could look like you're gaming it.
The most conservative option assuming the ADA showers use more water than the standard showers would be to run it like E.H. suggested above with "a percentage of the population to each shower fixture group based on the ratio of ADA showers to regular showers."
However, depending on the design and how you think the showers will be used, Michelle Rosenberger's approach could be argued as well.
Oh, and the first User Group will be for less than 100% of the FTEs -- part of them will be assigned to the ADA user group. So it may end up with 95% FTEs in User Group 1 and 5% in User Group 2 or it could be 80% and 20% or whatever seems realistic in your situation.