CI Project:
Retail Areas inside a mall open their doors in the morning and stand open during the working day. These shops will be conditioned and mech ventilated. Their doors will however meet the insulation requirements.
The mall is 6 stories with a glass roof with natural ventilation openings at the top and is open to outside through atriums and stairs connecting to the ground level walkin which has no doors.
All the Retail shops inside the mall will be in the CI certification project.
Q: Should it be manditory for the doors to open and close automatically or be closed as a default possition?
Q: Would the Retail shops be semi-heated space?
Q: What else will make this scenario problamatic?
Christopher Schaffner
CEO & FounderThe Green Engineer
LEEDuser Expert
963 thumbs up
July 13, 2010 - 9:48 am
I don't think either LEED or ASHRAE 90.1 addresses this directly. As someone who once designed the HVAC for a shopping mall, I can tell you that it is a fairly common strategy to skimp on the AC in the common space, and rely on the cool air spilling out of the retail spaces.
Unless you are running an energy model, I think CI wouldn't care. If you do run a model, I would model both the retail and the mall common space, with the doors open between them.
Jean Marais
b.i.g. Bechtold DesignBuilder Expert832 thumbs up
August 2, 2010 - 7:49 am
Thanks Christopher,
I just made a comment along a similar vein...(Tristan please delete or consolidate these as you see fit) and repeat it here for clarity:
Let's say you have a semi-exterior building envelope, a big roof for example with open facade containing a open walk through "building entrance". Then inside (building in building style) are your shopping mall spaces all conditioned. Each mall space has doors, but these are not building entrances, since you are already inside the building.
Then you have the following:
1) Building entrances that don't seperate conditioned space from the exterior --> 5.4.3.4 no vestibule required.
2) 5.4.3.4 Exception b. Doors not intended to be used as a building entrance.
If your roof enterances enter into semi-exterior space (3.2 Definitions "building envelope: building envelope, semi-exterior") then you may find that you fall into a similar scenario as above. I think then that you do not need vestibules. This however means that you may not condition the semi-exterior mall space at all...only the shops.
Also, what I personally don't get, is that there is nothing saying that my super sealing doors aren't allowed to constantly stand open...such as in a mall scenario.
What do you think?
Christopher Schaffner
CEO & FounderThe Green Engineer
LEEDuser Expert
963 thumbs up
August 9, 2010 - 8:44 pm
90.1 doesn't regulate behavior, just design and construction. If the owner wants to leave the doors open, not much we can do.
What climate zone are you in? Not all zones require vestibules as I am sure you know.
I disagree with your assessment of the situation. Either your mall space is conditioned, in which case you need vestibules at the entrance, or the mall space is unconditioned, in which case you need vestibules at the entrance to every store. If you've got more than 5 BTUH/SF cooling capacity in the mall area then it is conditioned space.
Jean Marais
b.i.g. Bechtold DesignBuilder Expert832 thumbs up
September 3, 2010 - 7:20 am
I was using the mall as an example, but my investigation was for a train station. Big roof, open on all sides (as least on the ground floor) with conditioned stores inside...and there will be no vestibules for every tiny shop cubicle...and there will be no vestibules on the ground (train platform) level. So this would exclude a LEED CI certification possibility.
Jean Marais
b.i.g. Bechtold DesignBuilder Expert832 thumbs up
October 6, 2010 - 5:47 am
Regarding your response of Aug 09 2010
"Either your mall space is conditioned, in which case you need vestibules at the entrance, or the mall space is unconditioned, in which case you need vestibules at the entrance to every store."
... Exception b. could be applied, because the shop door is not intented / cannot be used as the "building entrance" of the mall. From the definition of "building", I could consider my mall or train station as the building, and the shops as spaces inside the building, but not as buildings in themselves.
The worry I have is that for my train station "building", it may be nothing more than a glass tent with huge openings in the envelope for the trains to drive through. Could it still comply to all the manditory provisions...?
5.4.3.1 g. for example may present a problem for the open areas though which the trains drive.
Furthermore, could a building envelope consist wholly out of "building envelope, semi-exterior" provided that no conditioning of the main building space is planned. Like you said the shops provide most of the "semi-heating" for common mall spaces.