Our supplier who does the recharging of refrigerants has a standard formula for determining the refrigerant charge based on minutes per day of purge pump out operation. The values end up being very small fractions (0.0000n). Are these figures realistic and is this methodology acceptable to LEED?
We have other equipment though that do not use this refrigerant.
You rely on LEEDuser. Can we rely on you?
LEEDuser is supported by our premium members, not by advertisers.
Go premium for
Pablo Fortunato Suarez
Principal ESD Consultant/ArchitectGreenArc Sustainable Building & Architecture
253 thumbs up
January 24, 2011 - 5:33 am
In this case do we use 0.5% as minimum default value?
Hoping for some clarification.
Ben Stanley
Senior Sustainability ManagerWSP - Built Ecology
LEEDuser Expert
250 thumbs up
September 12, 2011 - 11:32 am
I think you're asking about the leakage rate that is used in the EAc5 calculation. If that is correct then the data points that are used in the Credit Form calculator are (1) total pounds of refrigerant added and (2) days since refrigerant was last added.
If the service provider does not track those two data points and uses another methodology like you've described above, then you should submit a narrative along with the credit submission demonstrating that their methodology provides the actual leakage rate over the performance period. This is very important because the credit cannot be earned unless the building team has monitored the actual leakage rates.
If the actual leakage rate is less than 0.5%, you should still enter 0.5% in the credit form as that is the minimum that the review team will accept.