I am working on a project (2 story office building) as a LEED AP & architect and received Preliminary Design Package comments from GBCI. One of the comment was about the building's gross square footage (6219 in Plf2) does not match to energy model square footage. Mechanical engineer revised his calculations for the final design package submission and brought up his sqf from 5005 to 5812 sqf however his model still does not include the walls. Mechanical engineer told me that he can not include the walls and left his sqf at 5812. It makes sense that he did not include the walls but I am not sure how GBCI will interpret this. I know that all square feet information throughout a project should be consistent but in this case, GBCI should have some sort of exception. Please share your experience and suggestions. Thanks
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Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5912 thumbs up
December 22, 2014 - 1:38 pm
Consistent and identical are two different things.
Some energy modeling software (but not all) uses the net square footage instead of the gross square footage. For PIf2 you are supposed to enter the gross square footage. For an energy model using net square footage you can enter the net square footage in EAp2. In general the net sf should be within 10% of the gross sf. Looks like the reason that the original areas were questioned. Looks like you should be OK with the revision.
Matt Dem
3 thumbs up
December 22, 2014 - 6:32 pm
Thanks Marcus