We're pursuing EB:O&M on several campus buildings including residence halls, classroom buildings, and office buildings. Office and classroom buildings are obvious to me when talking about "work space" and multi-occupant space" but what about dorm rooms? I believe they all come standard with one desk for each resident. There is a light switch that controls overhead lighting in the room and in some cases a built in light on the desk. Do you think the room light switch would count? Do we seriously have to go into ever dorm room and check if they have a desk lamp? Or would dorm rooms not necessarily include a "workspace" as LEED intends it. Thanks.
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David Posada
Integrated Design & LEED SpecialistSERA Architects
LEEDuser Expert
1976 thumbs up
September 4, 2012 - 8:56 pm
Take a look at the Space Classifications zipped spreadsheet from the IES Lighting Handbook, 10th Edition and listed under Resources at:
http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=221
On the BO+M tab, for Dormitories/ Residences, Bedrooms, Reading & Study Areas are defined as Individual Occupant spaces. in the table above, . In the NC EQc6.1 forum, there's a discussion about task lights and two-bedroom dorm rooms that's relevant.
In the Birds Eye View at
http://www.leeduser.com/credit/NC-2009/IEQc6.1
bedrooms in an apt just need one switch, but "workstations" need a task light. It's not clear which standard to apply here.
A dorm room might be seen differently than a multi-family residential bedroom, especially if the dorm room houses more than one person. There are several possible interpretations: in a 1 person dorm room, a single light switch and operable blinds/ window shades might be seen as sufficient, or perhaps the reviewer would insist on one task light per person in addition to the general light switch.
Since this space matrix was referenced more recently than some projects were registered, there's a heated discussion over at NC 2009 EQc6.2 on it's applicability, and a USGBC staffer did chime in to say they are working on an updated space matrix for IEQ credits, possibly for the Oct 1, 2012 addendum.
In the meantime, you might consider doing a random survey of a reasonable number of dorm rooms to see how many have task lights, and clarify the number of occupants per dorm room. Given the ambiguity of the requirements and even the newer referenced space matrix, seems like a representative survey rather than inspecting every single room would be reasonable.