Rating System

LEED BD+C: New Construction

Rating System Version

v2 - LEED 2.0

Inquiry

The office wing of this educational building will have a 250 sf copy/ file storage room on each floor, physically isolated from the rest of the space as the Credit requires. The copier takes up only a portion of the space (the file cabinets taking up the remainder) and as such our first question is this: Can we comply with the "separate outside exhaust" portion of this Credit by exhausting only the area around the copier itself or must the exhaust serve the entire room? We propose exhausting 75 cfm directly above the copier itself, which at 0.50 cfm/ sf will serve 150 sf, an area much larger than the copier area itself. Secondly, we are concerned about the new LEED 2.1 requirement of "a negative pressure of at least 7 PA (0.03 inches of water gauge)". We typically design laboratories and hospital isolation rooms to 0.001 inches of water gauge. Compared with this, 0.03 seems excessive, particularly when we are addressing the needs of a copy room. To achieve 0.03 inches of water gauge, the air flow through the door would need to be 700 ft/ minute, which is very high. Lastly, it is our understanding that copiers and printers manufactured today do not emit nearly as much particulate pollution as older machines. As such, we wonder if the entire requirement should not be rethought as it applies to copy/ print rooms.