Does anyone have any experience with having a large informal waiting space outside of classrooms and determining a transient load. There will be users using waiting in this space before and after classes. For permitting purposes we had to take a percentage of the classroom seats and apply it to the informal space. However, the number is quite high and the peak period of maximum occupancy is more or less 15 min at class changes.
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Erin Holdenried
Sustainability Architect125 thumbs up
January 23, 2014 - 4:46 pm
Wouldn't you be double-counting the students if you added a transient load for the waiting area? If you have already accounted for the students, I doesn't seem like there would be an additional load for waiting area.
Mike Manzi
Bora ArchitectsJanuary 23, 2014 - 5:15 pm
I agree. However from the mindset of the permitting agency there could possibly be students using this informal space for study and linger for hours. It's a quite large waiting area with soft seats. I could assume zero, I would hate to run into the same problem as the permitting agent.
Susan Walter
HDRLEEDuser Expert
1299 thumbs up
January 23, 2014 - 5:37 pm
You need to keep in mind that the building occupancy for the fire marshal and others does not equal FTE for LEED. Try thinking of the total time a student could be in the building. Talk to your client. It could be something like half the students come to class and leave afterwards so they are in the building for class plus transition time or about 90 minutes. Another quarter show up early or stay late to study and are there for class plus 2 hours for studying, etc. Your mileage will vary but once I learned to see transients from a farther perspective, LEED occupancy calcs got a lot easier. (Says she who loves to live in the weeds of things.)
Erin Holdenried
Sustainability Architect125 thumbs up
January 23, 2014 - 6:13 pm
That's a good point, Susan. Occupancy calculations for LEED are completely separate from occupancy calculations for Life Safety. The occupancy calcs for LEED focus on how people will actually use the building on a typical day or typical week. One should look at the building as a whole, and not at each individual space. Have a discussion with the owner to understand how many students will actually be in the building on a given day and how long they will be there.