ASHRAE 90-1 and swimming pools

Stéphane Paris

LEEDuser Basic Member

4 thumbs up

June 1, 2012

Hi all, I am currently working on a large project including an aquatic center. We plan to use geothermal energy to cover around 90% of the heat required for pool heating. We are considering pursuing a LEED NC certification for this aquatic center but need some clarification on how to address EAp2 and EAc1. It seems to me that pool-related energy is considered as process energy in ASHRAE 90-1, and must therefore be identical for both Baseline and Proposed buildings. Since it accounts for a large part of the energy consumption, I’m wondering how we can achieve those credits (and prerequisite!!) ? I’m also struggling to model such a building accurately following ASHRAE 90-1 requirements. Thanks in advance for your advices! Regards

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Marcus Sheffer

LEED Fellow

7group / Energy Opportunities

LEEDuser Expert

4454 thumbs up

Fri, 06/01/2012 - 13:42

Some aspects of indoor pools are regulated by 90.1, see Section 7.4/5 and keep in mind these are mandatory provisions. The pool water heating is process but the space conditioning is not. The baseline HVAC system will be a system 3 or 4 based on one or more of the exceptions in G3.1.1. For the pool water heating I think a safe baseline would be a boiler at minimum efficiency. You will need to show savings in this area as an exceptional calculation. Regarding how to model it, that is very software dependent so those questions are probably best raised in the appropriate energy modeling software forum found at onebuilding.org.