I have seen several flooring product systems now with resins and coatings that use a broadcast quartz or other inherently non-emitting material as one layer. We have seen flooring emissions testing on the "whole" product, and we have used emissions testing on the resin and/or coating layer and exempted the quartz per LEED coach direction. However this system uses resin coated quartz with a clear coat sealer over it. The sealer has emissions certification. How do we handle the quartz? It's not inherently non emitting once coated with resin. It's also not flooring on it's own. It doesn't have emissions testing. Do we assume it's encapsulated by the coating? And therefore not an issue. If it needs emissions, it's coated rocks. Is that flooring? And if it needs emissions and is part of flooring and doesn't have it, would it be a SF metric? It doesn't really "cover" all the SF that it's broadcast over. Does anyone have experience with this?
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Deborah Lucking
Director of SustainabilityFentress Architects
LEEDuser Expert
260 thumbs up
February 21, 2025 - 3:31 pm
Is this similar to the Sherwin Williams epoxy quartz flooring? If so S-W should be able to advise you on how to approach the emissions issue.
Good luck!
Michelle Rosenberger
PartnerArchEcology
523 thumbs up
March 3, 2025 - 2:48 pm
Hi Deborah,
Yes it is except that the quartz itself is coated in resin. The Dura-Quartz systems embed the quartz in a wet applied resin layer. In that case, we are just looking for emissions on the wet applied resin and sealer.
The LEED Coach response is that yes the resin coated rocks need to have emissons to comply with the flooring category. So we are just going to have to pursue a SF or cost threshold.