Has anyone ever heard of a project achieving this credit with an exclusion of certain wood products for which FSC certificaiton isn't available? I am working on a project that has an extensive use of wood piles, which I have been assured are not available from FSC forests. The high cost of the piles dwarfs any other wood costs on the project.
Can we exclude the piles from the calculation, since they are not available FSC, or should we not even bother spec-ing FSC wood for the rest of the project?
Nadav Malin
CEOBuildingGreen, Inc.
LEEDuser Moderator
844 thumbs up
February 9, 2010 - 11:07 pm
I hadn't heard of this ever being allowed, so I checked with a wood-procurement consultant, and he hadn't heard of it either. He also was curious why the company that supplies the piles couldn't get FSC-certified logs for this project--did you look into that?
Suzanne Robinson
2 thumbs up
March 16, 2010 - 1:00 pm
I had a project several years back where we tried to make the argument for an exclusion regarding fire rated plywood. I forget if it was regarding the FSC or the urea-formaldehyde material characteristic. At the time of the building, the product just didn't exist in the market. There had been one company that produced it but had shut down the production since the demand wasn't high enough.
The LEED reviewer didn't accept the exclusion pointing towards the market transformation goal of LEED. Which makes sense and I think was the right move personally. It's just frustrating for a client to be limited to what's available and having to think more outside of the box than normal. The good news is that this is an issue of the past since the material is now available. Go market transformation!
Sheri Lucas
Vice President, Director of LEED StandardizationWells Fargo
5 thumbs up
April 19, 2010 - 1:48 pm
I presume the denial of exclusion would apply to engineered wood products, as well. Anyone know for sure?
Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11477 thumbs up
April 19, 2010 - 6:01 pm
Yes, Sheri, I would say so, particularly since there are plenty of engineered wood products on the market with FSC-certiifed content. If you're looking for some, see the "GreenSpec Products" sidebar above and to the right of this page.
Sheri Lucas
Vice President, Director of LEED StandardizationWells Fargo
5 thumbs up
April 19, 2010 - 10:31 pm
Thank you, Tristan!