Based on this language from USGBC - At least 75% of all paints and coatings, by volume or surface area, meet the VOC emissions evaluation AND 100% meet the VOC content evaluation.
100% of products must be VOC compliant - meaning there is not a VOC budget option for v4.1? Is this your interpretation as well? Thus the weighted average used for general emissions evaluation is for that only - VOC content is all or nothing for a product? Or can VOC emissions also be budgeted?
I'm under the impression it meets the requirements or it does not (and you lose that category), but the wording isn't necessarily completely definitive imho.
Dave Hubka
Practice Leader - SustainabilityEUA
LEEDuser Expert
494 thumbs up
July 11, 2019 - 11:22 am
you are correct.
See page 209 of the v4.1 BD+C reference guide...it states "Option 2 Budget Calculation method has been removed completely..."
So all products must be VOC compliant, but only 75% of volume or surface area need to be GEE compliant.
Tommy Linstroth
CEOGreen Badger
LEEDuser Expert
118 thumbs up
July 11, 2019 - 2:36 pm
Dave, I'm not referring to the full option 2, where you do the budget based on assemblies. In the v4 low-emitting calculator, it determines category compliance, say for Paints and Coatings, by doing the total Baseline VOC vs Total Design VOC and if design is less than baseline, it awards compliance. Thus a single project OVER the VOC limit can be offset by another product under the limit (within paints&coatings only) much as you could for version 2009. The wording for v4 also says 100% compliance, as does v4.1, but it is 100% in aggregate, not on a product by product basis. W/O a v4.1 calculator, we can't verify which one they really mean - maintain 100% of total paint/coating baseline vs design compliance, or each and every product on an individual basis must be VOC compliant.
Dave Hubka
Practice Leader - SustainabilityEUA
LEEDuser Expert
494 thumbs up
July 11, 2019 - 3:04 pm
you make a really good point....the v4 Low-Emitting calculator allows projects with products that exceed the VOC limit to still demonstrate compliance with Option 1 Product Category Calculations.
I understood the v4.1 requirements to mean that each and every product must demonstrate compliance on an individual basis. To be safe, we are instructing all our project teams to select products that do not exceed the limit. But it would be nice to confirm with GBCI in the event a non-compliant product is used.
I'll check with my contacts at GBCI and post the correspondence to the forum.
Renee Shirey
Stantec421 thumbs up
December 23, 2020 - 1:17 pm
David, did you ever hear back from your GBCI contacts on the issue of "budgeting" for products that exceed the VOC content?