Rating System

LEED BD+C: New Construction

Rating System Version

v2 - LEED 2.2

Inquiry

We believe that our project has gone a step better than drip-irrigation, and therefore deserves credit WE1.1. Project: 270,000 sf corporate campus Project Area: 130.5 acres (approx. 85% of which will remain as open, undisturbed space.) Total Planted Area: 13.2 acres Planted Area w/ Irrigation: 1.75 acre turfgrass ballfield (located on an area, currently being used for construction staging, which was cleared by a previous owner.) Planted Area w/ No Permanent Irrigation: 11.45 acres of native species mixed planting (purpose is to revegetate the areas disturbed by construction, augment areas of sparse existing vegetation, and control erosion.) We believe this project landscaping has achieved exceptional water efficiency in two ways. First: manicured landscapes seem to be preferred in our area. In contrast to nearby projects, very little, if any, natural vegetation will be removed for relandscaping. In addition, the project team took unusually extensive measures to preserve the natural vegetation and therefore minimize the need for irrigation. As a result, only 10% of our site will be planted and only 1.3% will be irrigated, which we believe is unusual and significant in terms of water savings. Second: during the design process, we considered several different irrigation options. Without changing the planted area, we considered the following scenarios using the LEED WE1.1 calculations. A. Baseline case uses sprinklers for entire planting area (with average species): requiring approx. 2.2 million gallons. B. Design case uses drip irrigation for mixed planting area (with average species): requiring approx. 1.5 million gallons. (78% of which is for the drip irrigation system) C. Final design case goes a step further, in the spirit of credit WE 1.2) and eliminates the need for permanent irrigation in the mixed planting area (the majority of irrigation): requiring approx. 0.33 million gallons. The final design case saves 1.87 million gallons, a 67% reduction over the original baseline case.