Dear All,
we’re currently working on a project of a new office building pursuing LEED Core & Shell Certification. In what relates with occupancy in tenanted areas:
- according to Getting Started section of Reference Guide, projects that include incomplete spaces must use Appendix 2 Default Occupancy Counts to establish occupant counts for incomplete spaces. Typically we follow this path to calculate building occupants to be used at indoor water use calculations, number of bicycle racks and showers needed, etc;
- in the particular case of ventilation requirements from EQ p1 Minimum indoor air quality performance, to perform outdoor airflow rate calculations, we typically use either the actual occupancy considered for HVAC Systems Design or the default occupancy density from ASHRAE 62.1-2010.
The above referred strategy typically results in different number of occupants considered under ventilation credit and the remaining credits. This occurs because default occupancy densities from Appendix 2 typically are lower than actual occupancy densities. We believe this is not a much relevant issue because credit intents are different. However, we would like to clarify if in terms of LEED submittals this strategy is acceptable for LEED reviewers.
Thanks in advance,