Rating System

LEED BD+C: New Construction, LEED ID+C: Commercial Interiors, LEED BD+C: Core and Shell, LEED O+M: Existing Buildings

Rating System Version

v2 - LEED 2.2, v2 - LEED 2.0, v2 - LEED 2.0, v3 - LEED 2008

Inquiry

Our building is a 9 story multifamily residential building for seniors and grand families with 95 apartments. All common areas including a community center, corridors and stairwells will be no-smoking areas, however we are not able to make individual apartments non-smoking. Hence we are demonstrating compliance with the Smoke Control prerequisite based on the residential compliance path. We will have pressurized corridors and appropriately seal all vertical ducts. This building has a unique floor plan because of the presence of a 3-story existing landmark structure on-site and hence has no repetitive, or standard apartment layouts per floor, but each full floor plate is consistent. We understand that we have to perform both blower door tests to measure the sealing of the apartments and corridor pressurization tests to check the corridor pressure against the apartments. The \'Residential Manual of California 2001 Energy Efficiency Standard\', states that multistory buildings more than 4 stories are covered in the non-residential manual and we did not find any information on the sampling methodology for high-rise residential buildings in the non-residential manual. Hence judging by the peculiarities of the building and absence of any clear sampling methodology in the \'Residential Manual of California 2001 Energy Efficiency Standard\' for high-rise residential building we think the following sampling methodology is logical. Sampling Methodology for Corridor Pressurization Testing: The residential portion of the building has been divided into two zones each of which has one make up air unit for corridor pressurization. We intend to select 1 apartment in each zone hence 2 on one floor and then and then repeat the test on the 4th & 8th floors, testing a total of six (6) apartments. Please let us know if this is acceptable. Sampling Methodology for Blower Door Tests: Since there is no clear sampling methodology for blower door tests in high-rise residential buildings, we think the above sampling methodology of testing 6 apartments as described for corridor pressurization testing, may be logical for blower door tests too. This way we can test apartments not only on one floor but also on the higher floors. However after reading the previous CIR\'s for this prerequisite, we see that LEED accepted and recommended a 10% sampling methodology. Could you please clarify, if the above methodology of sampling 6 units for blower door tests is acceptable or do we have to test at least 10% of all smoking apartments?