Earth Day plus 40

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The 40th anniversary of Earth Day arrives this week to relatively little fanfare. We're focused on other things: high unemployment, a moribund economy, residual sniveling over health insurance reform. But 40 years is an important milestone. I was the Earth Day coordinator at my junior high school in Wayne, Pennsylvania, 40 years ago. I remember running off Earth Day flyers on the school's mimeograph machine and can still recall that sweet (no-doubt-toxic) aroma of the chemicals those machines used.
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An easy credit, if the owner is on board

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This credit requires surveying building occupants to find out if they are satisfied with thermal conditions in the building, as defined by the thermal comfort variables defined in ASHRAE 55-2004. The credit costs little or nothing to implement (although it does take some time), and provides important feedback to building owners and operators. 

Do it yourself, or get help

If you have the internal staff resources and don’t want to pay for an outside service, you can go with a simple self-administered online survey.

LEED for Healthcare in Second Public Comment Period

The second public comment period is open from April 19th to May 18.
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It's been a long time coming (since November 2007), but USGBC today opened a second public comment period for LEED for Healthcare!

Sixty-two credits and prerequisites, and almost all have changes, though most are minor and are about aligning LEED for Healthcare with the LEED 2009 rating systems. Some of the more significant ones are:

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A smorgasbord of requirements


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This credit requires compliance with a varied group of items that cumulatively help keep pollutants out of the indoor air. These requirements include self-closing doors on janitors' closets, MERV 13 filtration on mechanical equipment, and entryway trackoff systems.
Compliance will require the coordination of team members—including the mechanical engineer, architect, plumbing engineer, and contractor—and also impact project design and operations. The basic requirements are:

New Data on the Cost of LEED, Credit-by-Credit

The goal of this report was to get a handle on the ways in which LEED credits can be achieved.
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We've just released a neat new report on what it costs to achieve specific LEED credits. Based on the current LEED-NC 2009 rating system, "The Cost of LEED" draws on the experience of veteran cost estimators to provide prices for specific measures a project team would consider. The report helps a team understand the implications of LEED on the cost of its own particular project, with lists of "standard" approaches compared to "high performance" options, along with cost premiums for those options.

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Kohler Hands-Free WAVE Flushometer

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With commercial plumbing fixtures, one trend has been very clear over the past few years: the transition to hands-free operation. Users don't want to touch anything in restrooms, period. The other trend is water conservation. Unfortunately, these two trends are not always in sync.

False-flush is a fairly common occurrence with sensor-activated toilet and urinal flushometers. I've had toilets flush three times before I've even used them!

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Documenting standard practice

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EQc7.1 requires that HVAC designs meet the requirements of ASHRAE Standard 55-2004, which deals with thermal comfort of building occupants. Specifically, ASHRAE 55 requires project teams to address air temperature, radiant temperature, humidity, and air speed. Earning this credit also sets the stage for you to earn EQc7.2: Thermal Comfort—Verification. 
In most cases, designing a system that complies with ASHRAE-55 is standard practice and documentation is the only LEED-specific requirement for achieving the credit, so it should cost very little to earn.

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