My team is working on a project that involves a high quantity of structural material and according to the handbook, "Structure and enclosure materials may not constitute more than 30% of the value of compliant building products. Projects with significant amounts of structural and enclosure materials may exceed the 30% limit by calculating an alternative structure and enclosure limit (See Calculations under Further Explanation)."
Where would we find calculations and allowable redefinitions of the structure and enclosure limits? We have some considerations as to what steel products may be redefined as to go under this limit, but we have not found literature explaining how we go about doing this.
Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11478 thumbs up
January 7, 2019 - 8:42 am
Susan, I'm seeing the following as the complete guidance for this situation in the online LEED Reference Guide. It doesn't offer a lot of specific guidance but seems to leave you a lot of latitude.... is this helpful... what your questions?:
Equation 3: Alternative Structure & Enclosure Percentage Limit for Option 2
For projects with significant amounts of structure and enclosure materials, the following calculation can be made to determine an alternative limit for the percentage of value that structure and enclosure materials can contribute to credit achievement. Note: this option is only available for projects that use the actual materials cost method (not the default cost method) to determine total project material costs.
Equation 3: Alternative Structure and Enclosure limit
Alternative Structure and Enclosure limit = (value $ of total building materials that are structural or enclosure) [divided by] (total actual materials value $)
Use the results of equation 3 to replace the 30% contribution factor limit in determining compliance with the credit.
Martha Farah
LEED consultantQSC Controls
March 15, 2019 - 6:01 am
A project that my team is working is going through a similar problem. Is the addenda ID# 100002183, the alternative structure and enclosure limit, included into the BPDO LEED calculator sample, now availabe in version 01?