I am working on a project that is designing external vegetated shades/screens. For local code compliance, we are not allowed to include the vegetated shades in our energy model. Are we allowed to include vegetated shading elements in our LEED energy model? I can't find any guidance on this in the refernce guide. (We would also like to include them in the daylight analysis for the daylight credit.)
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Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5867 thumbs up
July 9, 2020 - 1:48 pm
Sounds like a fun challenge.
Yes you should be able to include them. The question is how to do so. That depends on the software you use. Most allow you to enter a shading device. In this case you will need to determine the degree of opacity of the shading device. You will need to provide a justification for how you have included them in your modeling.
Maria Grimm
AssociateMeyers+ Engineers
5 thumbs up
July 10, 2020 - 2:10 pm
IES-VE now allows you to apply a transparency to an external shading element so that is the route we will be taking; we will lean on the landscape designer to help us determine transparency... should be interesting. Thanks for the response!