Has anyone had any luck submitting materials that are "self-declared" compliant from the manufacturer? We have a contractor who wants to use the Armstrong Clean Room Healthzone Ultima #1935 ceiling tiles in a LEED for Schools project. However, the Ultima #1935 has not actually been tested for compliance with CA 01350. The testing report on the CHPS databse is for the Ultima #1912 tile, but has a cover letter from Armstrong that states the Healthzone Ultima is a related product, and that it can be deduced that it would also meet the CA 01350 requirments, if it were to be tested. I don't think this will be sufficient, but thought I would check here to see if anyone else has tried this approach.
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Josh Jacobs
Technical Information & Public Affairs ManagerUL Environment
515 thumbs up
April 17, 2012 - 7:58 pm
Alison,
I'm sorry to answer this way, but it is actually up to you. The CA 01350 that is referenced in LEED 2009 does not address this situation. The best direction that I can give you is that the current CA 01350 v1.1 (please note this is not what is referenced in LEED 2009) has a section that governs this exact situation:
8.3 Breadth of Claim
8.3.1 A claim that extends beyond the individual product that is tested shall only be made if there is clear evidence justifying that tested items are representative of this product or related products. Such evidence shall be documented and the documentation shall be made available to interested parties upon request (see Section 8.7 and 8.8).
This would tell me that if you are abiding by CA 01350 v1.1 (again please note this is not what is referenced in LEED 2009) that you can ask the manufacturer or certification organization to verify/show you how they came to 'group' products as similar.
Alison Y Rivenburgh
223 thumbs up
April 18, 2012 - 10:57 am
Thank you for the quick response, Josh. This actually leads into another question - whether projects are allowed to use CA 01350 v1.1 instead of CA 01350 with 2004 addenda. Since v1.1 supercedes the 2004 version, manufacturers are currently testing their products to the v1.1 standard, not the 2004 version, so these days it is not really possible to demonstrate compliance with the older version of the standard. I sent an email to USGBC this week to get some clarification on this; I'll try to post the response here once I get an answer.
Josh Jacobs
Technical Information & Public Affairs ManagerUL Environment
515 thumbs up
April 18, 2012 - 12:09 pm
Alison,
While I can't say that I have seen anything official - I do know some LEED reviewers that have accepted reports garnered from the new test methodology for the EQ c4.0 credits.