Our project does not include task lighting; however several users have brought existing task lighting with them from the previous premises to the new premises. It is unclear whether the task lights are owned by the project owner or the occupants, although as the project owner has a corporate policy against task lighting, I presume that ownership could be transferred to the occupants if this made any difference. The photographs supplied as documentation for PIf4 were taken after occupation and show task lighting on a number of desks.
The review team has indicated that we need to include this task lighting in our LPD calculation.
The credit language requires design compliance for all portions of the building within the Tenant's scope of work; however it also indicates that the LPD must be applied to the entire tenant's space. It is clear that pre-existing lighting fixtures in the space must be included in the calculation; however the situation here is somewhat different.
Has anyone had experience excluding task lighting which is installed by the project occupants? These will fluctuate over the life of the space as occupants come and go and as they do not form part of the lighting design it is difficult to include them in the LPD calculation in any meaningful way.
Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5909 thumbs up
October 14, 2015 - 9:23 am
Task lights have always counted in LPD calculations. Ownership of the light fixture does not make any difference. What is plugged in is what counts. Count what is there now and include it.
Perhaps the owner should consider finding out why folks feel they need task lights or maybe enforce their own policy if the lighting system has been designed to negate their necessity. A task/ambient system is often the most energy efficient so I am not sure why they would have such a policy.
Christopher Schaffner
CEO & FounderThe Green Engineer
LEEDuser Expert
963 thumbs up
October 14, 2015 - 9:40 am
The moral of the story is that you should submit your design phase before occupancy. What happens after move in really should not impact a "design and construction" rating system.
Also, note that "furniture-mounted supplemental task lighting that is controlled by automatic shutoff" can be excluded per 90.1-2007 9.2.2.3 exception (p). So another alternative is to buy these folks a power strip with an occupancy sensor attached. http://www.wattstopper.com/products/sensors/plug-load-controls/idp-3050....
Michael Smithing
Director - Green Building AdvisoryColliers International Ltd.
304 thumbs up
October 14, 2015 - 9:27 pm
Christopher - Thanks for the help, the product recommended could be very useful. I've used the 9.2.2.3 exception on another project when we were able to include the automatic shut-off into the design but was not aware a post-design solution existed.
As the fit-out period for most of our CI projects is very short we typically go for a combined review. We've learned something important about the timing of the interior photographs on this project.
Marcus - the general policy against task lighting is because occupants often do not turn the fixtures off when they leave. I know they've also had issues with older (non-LED) fixtures - in one instance an occupant left a stuffed animal next to a task light and it caught fire - and then complained that someone had "stolen" their animal.
Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5909 thumbs up
October 15, 2015 - 4:11 pm
So the policy should ban incandescent/halogen task lights.