It is my understanding (largely from this site) that if a project does NOT have an irrigation system, it can qualify for the maximum five points under that credit, because the project has reduced the amount of water used in irrigation by 100% over a typical system.
It is also my understanding that a project that does NOT use any water to cool the chillers (they are air cooled), does NOT qualify for any points under this credit, though it has reduced the amount of water used by the cooling tower by 100%.
Why would an absence of a system earn full credit in one instance, and disqualify a project from earning points in another?
Thanks!
Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11478 thumbs up
May 12, 2010 - 5:14 pm
You do understand things correctly, and raise a good question. It's kind of like EQc4.3 in earlier versions of LEED-NC, where you could only earn the point if you used carpet, so in some cases teams were adding small areas of carpet just to earn the point. Not exactly productive.In that case, the credit was changed through a CIR and in LEED 2009. LEED-EBOM definitely has some kinks; maybe this issue will be revisited in 2012.
Jenny Carney
Vice PresidentWSP
LEEDuser Expert
657 thumbs up
May 19, 2010 - 9:58 am
Another note on this...you can only earn the irrigation credits if you actually have some amount of vegetation on your site (something to irrigate). An absence of vegetation itself results in the same situation as with the cooling towers - the points are off the table.
Geraldine Seguela RAIA
Principal Engineer- SustainabilityAECOM
53 thumbs up
November 19, 2012 - 1:08 am
Chilled water on our project is provided by a large (80,000 TonR) district cooling plant. Does this credit applies?