Our project is an apartment building with retail and utilizes its own chiller plant with cooling towers. We would like to reduce water loss through blowdown by treating the water in the cooling tower, rather than treating the makeup water. Our methods are to use a lakos filtration device to recirculate the water in the cooling tower, thereby reducing the dissolved solids in the cooling tower and reducing the blowdown, which meets the intent of this credit.
However, LEED states that the cycles of concentration in order to meet the credit requirements are solely based on allowable concentration and makeup water concentration. Will LEED allow us to filter the water in the cooling tower basin to reduce blowdown?