Rating System

LEED O+M: Existing Buildings

Rating System Version

v2 - LEED 2.0

Inquiry

Project Background Our project is one building in a much larger conglomeration of buildings that have been constructed over the last 100 years. The building that we are currently working on LEED EB Certification had a very unique manufacturing process in it that made the chemical "furfural" out of oat byproducts. This process was removed from the building approximately 5 years ago and the building has been used for general storage since then. Our project is to renovate the existing building structure and install a new oat cleaning process line. Question The new Cleaning House #3 process is state of the art and incorporates high efficiency equipment and links the process equipment with the building systems to improve efficiency. Our difficulty is developing a base line for comparing the renovated building and new process to, as required in EA Prerequisite 2 and EA Credit 1. We would like to use the existing Cleaning House #2 which is located in the same manufacturing facility and is a similar process to the new Cleaning House #3 without the upgraded efficiencies, thereby making it an excellent indicator of what the energy usage would be if it wasn\'t built utilizing sustainable principles as the baseline model. Would you find this an acceptable approach for establishing a baseline for comparison? Assuming our baseline proposal is acceptable we would also like to make the comparison based on a cost per pound of product which includes all energy used in the building and the process, because the existing Cleaning House #2 does not have separate metering systems.