The civil engineer and landscape architect collaborate to design the stormwater systems to meet project goals, using the civil engineer's assessment of how much stormwater may be reduced through nonstructural means, such as increased landscape area or bioswales, and how much must be treated through engineered systems such as rainwater cisterns or green roofs.

Explore potential synergies and tradeoffs with other LEED credits or green building strategies. Items to discuss can include the use of parking lots versus parking garages for stormwater management, trees for shading hardscapes, and avoiding impervious surfaces (SSc7.1), trees for passive solar design (EAc1), plantings with native or adapted plants (WEc1), water reuse (WEc3), and rainwater capture (WEc1).

All Cases

Integrating the stormwater plan into the design at an early stage and calculating the stormwater reduction percentages significantly decreases additional costs. This way, landscaping and building infrastructure can be designed with stormwater reduction in mind.

Some lighting manufacturers will offer to perform a photometric study of your site if your team selects their product for the project.

All site lighting, with the exception of sports field lighting, must meet the light trespass requirements of the neighborhood type, according to the IESNA zone categories. In addition, the sport lighting levels must be within limits listed in the LEED reference guide.

Avoid aiming light at highly reflective site and ground surfaces, such as white pavement and water features, which can exacerbate light pollution. The photometric study may not capture these characteristics.

A photometric study will facilitate communication about lighting levels among the designer, owner and the design team. The study entails computer modeling simulating the lighting intensity of the designed layout in footcandles, lux or candela. It allows the designer to see the resulting output, with iterative design options as the fixtures are reduced or replaced. Typically the photometric study measures light levels in a 10’x10’ grid.

ASHRAE’s exterior lighting density table lists exterior spaces under two categories. Tradable surfaces are those where the average LPD of all those surfaces are within the total LPD limits. For example, in LZ4, both sales canopy lighting and stairway lighting have a maximum of 1.0 Watts/ft2. The project may decide to increase sales canopy lighting to 1.1 Watts/ft2 as long as the stairways compensate with a decreased LPD of 0.9 Watts/ft2 (given that the surfaces are the same area) so that the average of the two is 1.0 Watts/ft2.

Revisit the LPD calculations to make sure any design changes maintain the threshold limits.