Revisit your baseline materials budget as the design evolves to make sure that the numbers are accurate and you are on track to achieve your goal.
Older versions of LEED allowed assemblies to be broken down by weight, cost, or volume. The new LEED Reference Guides only allows weight.
Request that manufacturers provide assembly information broken down by weight.
Determine the value of assemblies by separating each component by weight as a percentage of the total. For example, if a $100 piece of built-in casework contains 80% (by weight) salvaged wood and 20% (by weight) new marble, $80 worth (80%) of the casework would contribute to this credit, because that is the proportion that is reused. (See the Reuse Assembly Calculator in the Documentation Toolkit for help making these calculations.)
When a product is made of multiple components that may or may not be all reused, use the following special considerations.
Assemblies
If using salvaged furniture, make sure the durability of the product has not been compromised, or you may need to replace the salvaged item with a new product all too soon. Also be aware that salvaged furniture and furnishings may not come with warranties.
MRc1.2: Building Reuse can involve preserving part of a building or material onsite and either reusing it for its original purpose, or leaving it in its original location. Saving doors from demolition and reinstalling them on the new project as doors counts toward MRc1.2: Building Reuse—Maintain Interior Nonstructural Components.
MRc3.2: Material Reuse—Furniture and Furnishings can involve material that is salvaged onsite and used again onsite for another purpose or in another location. The salvaged material can count towards both this credit (MRc3.2) and MRc2: Construction Waste Management. For example, if a project demolishes a building and saves all the wood doors, then turns the salvaged doors into tables for the new construction, the salvaged doors count both toward MRc3.2 and MRc2. That’s because the doors were reused as furniture and diverted from a landfill.
MRc3.2: Material Reuse: Furniture and Furnishings and MRc1.2: Building Reuse are often confused when salvaged materials are recovered from the demolition of a project site.