Why am I penalized and unable to achieve these credits simply because we decided an air cooled chiller was more energy efficient, and my clinic doesn't serve food?
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Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11478 thumbs up
January 18, 2017 - 4:01 pm
Janice, it's often said in LEED, "not all credits are appliable to all projects." In some cases this can seem particularly unfair. But so it goes—it's a single system meant to apply to an infinite variety of buildings.
But that's just a philosophical take on it. As for this specific credit, I am not familiar with its development.
Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11478 thumbs up
January 23, 2017 - 3:36 pm
I got this additional feedback from USGBC. In addition to the philosophical note that I gave, they said:
These two issues are common, or were in 2004, in hospital designs. LEED for Healthcare was designed with a 24/7 hospital as the prototypical project. Energy efficiency for using an air-cooled chiller will be reflected in Optimize Energy Performance. For 4.2, we added the language about evaporative condensers via addenda 10/18/12 as part of our approach to make LEED more global. Air-cooled systems are more common outside of the U.S., though are generally less efficient and the added language was intended to act as a backstop. For 4.3, we do award projects the point if they do not have food waste disposer systems or pulpers. It’s something we accounted for in the form.