Limit of water flow?

Hi Enrique,
You should be able to select Public Lavatory in fixture family and then Metering in fixture type. Once you do that the table changes that row to GPC instead of GPM. You need to upload your backup for that conversion. GPM rate x 12 sec / 60 = GPC. If you have a 0.5 gpm faucet, that means a 0.1 GPC.

That should be all you have to do. Revise the table, provide the GPC in the table per your conversion, upload your conversion calculation.

Water Use Reduction Additional Guidance document is very helpful.

Hi Enrique,
As far as I know, only with respect to not going lower than 12 sec in the duration for the calculation. Less than that is not considered enough for hand washing. You could have lower GPM than 0.5 though I don't usually see it where I am.

Hi Enrique,
We generally write a narrative for each review comment response that is part of the revised documents that we upload for each credit. In this narrative, we duplicate the comment and guidance, then we explain how we have addressed each and every point. We find that this makes it easier for reviewers to see that we have caught everything. So yes I would definitely provide a narrative explaining the changes you've made in response to the comments and upload that also before you submit for review.

Also FYI if you are simply responding to initial review comments and have not received your "final" review, this is not an Appeal. An Appeal would mean that you would be paying an additional review fee to submit information a third time for that specific credit only. Otherwise you are still just responding to comments.

Hi Enrique,
My understanding is that it is inappropriate for a reviewer to "come up with" a comment in the final review that they did not flag in the initial review unless you have added a credit or changed your compliance path. If I were you, I would be asking about that.

Enrique,
I sympathize. This is a tough area. I think that I would use Feedback and identify your issue as being related to review comments then make your case that this issue was not flagged during the initial review. Particularly with a Prerequisite, that is just brutal. It doesn't sound like you have a compliance problem, just a documentation issue. That is vastly different.

Both Feedback and Contact Us through the USGBC website can take some time, especially if it's not a simple answer. But you don't have a lot of choices when it comes to direct contact.

I have to admit that I'm a bit worried about the new membership levels and how they are attached to customer service and technical support. Moving forward large firms that are able to pay higher annual fees will get their questions answered in a guaranteed 24 or 48 hour period. Small guys will have to wait. This can obviously be a big deal if you can't get the answer you need in a timely fashion. Timely support has been an issue for them for a while. I guess I hoped they would handle it by improving their response times for everyone, not just for a favored corporate few.

Good luck.

I have some experience with the feedback route and even requesting a review extension. I've been successful with both.

A recent project review required clarifications that we anticipated taking longer than 25 days due to the location of the project site. We made the request for an extension with a brief statement as to why and it was granted fairly quickly. The response seemed genuinly supportive of helping the project be successful and not strictly punative in their assessment of our request.

I also received a very prompt and clear reply to a feedback question recently and am cautiously optomistic that the new, more approachable, GBCI model will be successful.

Good luck!

I'll chime in and just say that over the years many reviewers have "added" issues to comments in response to our clrificaitons, etc. There seems to be no way to fight this formally, but I agree that you should use the Feedback optio, or just email your Review Team directly and clearly state your rationale and concerns. We have had success calling things to their attention when they seem unfair - and without paying for the appeal process.