In place of elevated planters, grade parking lots and walkways to direct runoff to depressed swales or bioretention areas with perforated pipes and other slow-release infiltration mechanisms.
Involve the whole project team in integrating stormwater strategies with the site design and structure. For example, calculate a cistern size appropriate for water
The civil engineer typically uses a computer program or in-house spreadsheets to calculate the current rainfall and infiltration rates, which helps to determine the best practices and best systems for an individual site.
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
A hybrid compliance path may be the best solution for some projects. For example, if most of the regularly occupied spaces pass the calculation criteria in the prescriptive path, and a portion of the spaces fall short very narrowly or use strategies like lightshelves not accounted for by the prescriptive path, measurement of those spaces after finishes are complete could demonstrate that they are sufficiently daylit after finishes are complete.
Measurement is a low-cost compliance method but may not help to optimize daylight during the design phase. An optimized daylight design can cut down substantially on lighting costs over the long run.
