We have a large site in an industrial park. We plan to include a 24 Acre parcel in our project site boundary that is owned by our client and part of this area will contain the water detention pond and the rest will be left in its existing field grass condition. The detention pond will have an adaptable pond seed mix applied with no irrigation. How should these areas be factored into our irrigation efficiency calcs. Since they are not irrigated will they help us achieve this credit, or will LEED consider this as turf which to my understanding requires irrigation?
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William Weaver
LEED Fellow, WELL APJLL
181 thumbs up
July 17, 2013 - 11:34 am
You can exclude the non-irrigated areas from your calculations, but the total irrigated area must be equal from your baseline to your design case.
Joel Simonyak
Shultz + Associates ArchitectsJuly 17, 2013 - 11:39 am
Thanks William - So we can't include the area in our baseline calc as area that might have been irrigated turf and then include the area in the design calc as area that isn't irrigated listed as native or adaptive plantings which would seem to help our efficiency percentage, correct?
William Weaver
LEED Fellow, WELL APJLL
181 thumbs up
July 17, 2013 - 11:49 am
I haven't tried this before, but you may be able to list the area as turf grass in your baseline case. Then, in your design case, lable the same area as 'adative/native plantings (non-irrigated). Assign the design case an IE of '0' so that the TWA shows zero usage.
Lewis Hewton
Cundall12 thumbs up
July 17, 2013 - 7:39 pm
My comment would be to remember that the baseline case is representative of "conventional equipment and design practices" and not representative of the pre-existing conditions.
i.e. if it is standard practice not to irrigate the surrounding grounds to an industrial park, then the design case would not achieve any savings over the baseline. If however, it is standard practice to provide irrigated trees/shrubs/groundcover etc. then it would be possible to demonstrate savings. My understanding is that LEED does not prescribe site specific "standard practice" but refers the judgement to a suitably qualified professional such as the project landscape architect.