Hi all - I'm working on a project pursuing the ceilings category and wants to shoot for the 90% by suface area threshold. This project also has excludable overhead structural elements. My question is - do we exclude the surface area of the excludable elements from both numerator and demonimator, or do we include it as compliant area in both? We know that our skylights won't comply and, if we include the OH structural elements in the total surface area, skylights are a small portion of the overall and we can meet the 90% threshold. On the otherhand, if we exclude the OH strucutural elements from the total surface are, skylights become a much larger portion of the overall and we may not comply. Thoughts? Experiences? Secret decoder ring for the grey areas of LEED? Thanks in advance for your help!
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Xavi Ramon
Green Building MaterialsGreen Living Projects
6 thumbs up
April 24, 2020 - 6:33 am
Hi Michelle, we are pursuing same category in a project with a similar issue. I have an insulation panel on the ceiling. As 1 product must be counted just on 1 category, we are calculating surface area of this "insulation ceiling" into the insulation category. For the ceiling category I excluded the insulation surface area of both numerator and denominator (if I dont do this then I would be counting the material in both categories). So the ceiling surface are for LEEd calculations is not the same as the ceiling surface area of the project. Not sure if this is ok but I dont see alternative. In your case, I dont know why your overhead structural elements are excludable, maybe you can choose here, so if including those elements you can reach the % that would be fine, but then you will have to include those elements in other credits as well (the same as happens with MEP?) hopefuly GBCI will publish more guidelines about surface calculations of this credit