I have a similar quesion as Alicja Bieszyńska, had above. Our project will contain offices and a pre-school facility. Two adjacent building contains homes. These buildings will share a large yard. We will have climate adopted vegatation but the pre-shool and the residents will be able to do cultivation of vegetables. These cultivation are a bit more sensitive to drought and will have drop irrigation, but it will only be used when needed. So for just the cultivation there will be permanent irrigation system installed, but we water the vegetation only from time to time in dry seasons. We think it's valuble to provide with urban farming and also a study tool for the pre-school children to learn where food comes from. How can we still achive option 2 and still be able to provide for this? Would it be accepted if we use rainwater for irrigation for just the cultivation? The other vegetation within the project will do fine without irrigation.
Also I like to add that the cultivation area is only 480 sf and the rest of the vegetated areas is over 10 000 sf.
Susann Geithner
PrincipalEmerald Built Environments
1297 thumbs up
March 24, 2016 - 9:58 am
You have to use non-potable water such as rainwater for the vegetable gardens. This way you can meet the requirements. Just make sure to still show the 50% reduction of water need for irrigation overall by selecting drought resistant plants or reducing the grass/turf area.
Andrey Kuznetsov
ESG consultant, LEED AP BD+CSelf Employed
33 thumbs up
April 20, 2016 - 9:40 am
Aren't vegetable gardens can be excluded from calculations per LEED Interpretation LI 10155 (http://www.usgbc.org/content/li-10155)?
Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11477 thumbs up
April 20, 2016 - 10:07 am
Yes, Andrey, good catch. Just make sure you exclude vegetable gardens from the baseline and design case uniformly.