LEED Info
The following narrative briefly describes the measures taken to achieve LEED points
Sustainable Site
Sustainable design measures in site development focused on several areas: Preserving and restoring the native habitat existing on the site, encouraging alternative transportation and minimizing air pollution from fossil fuels, eliminating damage to local watersheds and microclimates from stormwater runoff, minimizing the project’s contribution to local climate change, and providing a creature and people-friendly night sky by careful building and site lighting.
A site sediment and erosion plan was designed conforming to EPA’s Stormwater Management for Construction Activities document, preventing loss of soil to stormwater runoff or wind erosion, and preventing sedimentation of nearby storm sewer/streams and air pollution from dust and particulates.
To encourage building occupants to use public transportation, a new, convenient bus stop was placed on the east face of the property, adjacent to the building. This bus stop provides access to at least two bus lines for commuters working in the building.
To encourage alternative commuting, bicycle storage for 50+ bicycles has been provided. There are 15 outdoor and 32 indoor bicycle racks available for tenant use. Showers and locker rooms for changing are also located near the bike racks.
On this 20.8 acre site, approximately 13.8 acres were restored or retained as habitat and native/adaptive landscape. Much of this exists as forested area, and additional landscaped areas within the site use native and adapted vegetation. The building has been sited to avoid the forested area and eliminate construction disturbance in those areas being preserved.
Impact of human development on local watersheds can be severe, changing local microclimates, water supplies and habitats significantly. The storm water infiltration system manages the site’s entire storm drainage demand within the property boundaries resulting in no discharge to offsite areas. Consequently, there is no disruption to offsite natural water flows. Moreover, the distributed infiltration strategy provides infiltration in a manner that mimics nature (versus conveying all the collected runoff to a large, central pond). Therefore, even onsite overland flows and percolation into the water table will occur as natural water flows.
Water Efficiency
Water is a precious resource, even here in the Northwest where it may seem that supplies are abundant. There are many competing needs from farming to industry to salmon spawning. Water systems design treat water carefully, conserving it to the greatest extent possible.
Calculations show that the dual-flush toilets and waterless urinals employed in the design estimate reduced wastewater generation by 52%.
Calculations show that the same dual-flush toilets and waterless urinals, combined with low flow faucets and shower heads estimate reduce potable water usage by 45%, well above the 30% target in LEED.
Indoor Environmental Quality
A balance of measures was employed to ensure that the quality of the work environment for future occupants will be healthy, productive and enjoyable.
Carbon dioxide monitoring is provided to sustain long-term occupant health and comfort. A permanent monitoring system provides feedback on space ventilation performance in a form that affords operational adjustments. Initial operational set point parameters maintain indoor carbon dioxide levels no more than 530 parts per million higher than outdoor levels by at any time.
To ensure that all contaminants were removed from the building’s air supply, a two-week minimum flush-out period was conducted after completion of construction and before occupancy.
All adhesives and sealants were specified to be in compliance with VOC limitations cited in the LEED standard and construction practices were observed carefully to assure that the specified materials were used throughout.
Paints and coatings that comply with Green Seal’s VOC and chemical component limits are commonly available and were specified and installed throughout the project.
Carpet systems, including adhesives used where applicable, met CRI’s Green Label testing program standard.
To minimize the contaminants present in the occupants’ breathing zone, care was taken to control pollutants at the source. Entrances include walk-off systems to remove dirt and other pollutants before they enter the building, copier areas and janitor closets are exhausted directly to the exterior, with no air recirculated to the general office area. Building maintenance systems also adopted a minimize use of chemical or highly toxic cleaning agents.
It has been demonstrated that views to the outdoors have an impact on the well-being and cognitive function of regular occupants, reinforcing our intuitive knowledge with research. This building was planned to be primarily an open office, with conference rooms and other support areas on the interior with relites facing out toward the view. USGBC does not consider open office furniture when crediting this point. Consequently, well over 90% of all regularly occupied spaces have access to views.
Innovation in Design
Although LEED is a good standard, it is not intended to define the "state of the art" in sustainable building and site design. Innovation is constant, and there are many design directions that may go beyond LEED standards or work outside the defined point structure. Several of the measures in this design exceed LEED standards.
LEED Site credits require that no net increase be seen in stormwater discharge between existing and developed conditions. This project has gone beyond that requirement by providing zero stormwater discharge. This has been achieved by utilizing infiltration as the flow control strategy. Infiltration design takes collected stormwater and directs it to an area where that water can percolate through the underlying site soils and re-enter the ground water. If the stormwater can’t percolate as fast as it is delivered to the infiltration area, then that area must also allow for its temporary storage (via a pond or a vault). Rather than providing for this LEED requirement via a single central pond, a distributed approach utilizing multiple storage facilities was adopted in order to minimize the need for conveyance systems, preclude impacting a single large area of the site with a central facility and minimize the depth of fill required to achieve infiltration.
The distributed infiltration strategy provides infiltration in a manner that mimics nature (versus conveying all the collected runoff to a large, central pond). Therefore, onsite overland flows and percolation into the water table will occur as natural water flows.
Reduction in potable water usage: Water usage in the building has been reduced beyond that indicated in LEED. Our calculations show that this building’s water usage will be 45% less than the baseline case, an improvement of 15%.
An ice storage plant was provided to reduce the size of the chiller plant. The chiller plant size reduces from 420 tons to 250 tons. The chiller will run during off hour times to produce ice. The ice will be melted throughout the course of the day to augment the chiller capacity. This reduces the chiller demand charge by 40% as well as reduces the total electrical consumption of the building during peak times.
Approximately 50% of the roof surface has been planted with sedum cuttings producing a green roof. This helps to reduce urban hot spots and contributes with absorption of stormwater on the site and acts as additional insulation to assist with heating/cooling for the building.