Fitness Center water use

Michael Smithing

Director - Green Building Advisory

Colliers International Ltd.

LEEDuser Basic Member

201 thumbs up

October 11, 2012

We have a fitness center in our building and I'm looking for guidance on how to model water use in the facility. It appears obvious to model the facility as a separate fixture group as it has an identifiable set of users which are different (although overlapping) with the building FTE. If a building FTE does use the center he will be tracked there as a transient. While the data related to toilet use may be close to accurate for the center FTEs and visitors (in the lack of any other data,) the shower use pattern is obviously wrong as a very high percentage of the transients will use the showers. Has anyone dealt with this before and how did you handle it?

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Dan Ackerstein

Principal

Ackerstein Sustainability, LLC

LEEDuser Expert

545 thumbs up

Thu, 10/11/2012 - 15:37

We had a very similar situation at a project recently Michael, and it sounds like you have it well in hand. We adjusted the assumptions around fitness center users (transients) to reflect that they all used the toilet one time and that a high percentage (I think we used 80%) also used the shower. We derived those assumptions from conversations with the center staff and custodians. The LEEDOnline form can accomodate those changes readily. I would also recommend clearly explaining your assumptions about use patterns in your submittal - walk the reviewer through your logic about how fitness center users behave and your basis for those assumptions. Hope that helps, Dan

Michael Smithing

Director - Green Building Advisory

Colliers International Ltd.

LEEDuser Basic Member

201 thumbs up

Thu, 10/11/2012 - 15:49

Thanks for the quick response Dan. I figured that would be the approach but it's good to have some confirmation. I've learned the value of explaining anything out of the ordinary to the reviewer!