NEWS & EVENTS

 Gray Water Irrigation System

In order to accommodate Abode Communities request to explore water saving measures for landscape irrigation, Khalifeh & Associates Inc. set out to design the first gray water system approved by the County of Los Angeles. 

At a time when Los Angeles is facing water shortages, Abode Communities (a non-profit developer specializing in sustainable low-income housing projects) was committed to invest the necessary resources for designing and installing an environmentally sound system that would reduce water consumption in their 70 unit senior housing project.

Khalifeh & Associates explored different ways to meet this challenge and found that the best way to reduce consumption would be to retain, filter, and reuse the discharged water from the project’s onsite laundry facility. The effluent released from the washing machines would be captured in a 750 gallon underground storage tank located nearby the Laundry room. Contractors bid this system to have an installed cost of $60,000 and project that landscape water consumption to be reduced by 90%, giving the system a 25 year payback. The water factors of standard front load clothes washers are 31.5 gallons per cycle, 1 hour cycle time, and there are a total of 7 washers installed onsite. The laundry facility operates 12 hours per day, making its’ water usage 2,646 gallons/day.

31.5 gallons per wash x 1hr cycle x 7 washing machines x 12 hour occupancy = 2,646 gallons per day

100% of the effluent released by the washing machines will be captured in an underground storage tank equipped with a small irrigation pump. The effluent from the washing machines require sufficient filtration and treatment before landscape application is done. Dependant on the type of soil, local codes require respective minimum square footage of irrigation area per 100 gallons of estimated daily gray water dispersal. The Soil sample taken by a Geotechnical engineer proved the soil to be in a category requiring 100ft² of landscape area per 100 gallons of gray water. This made the total required area 2,646ft².

2,646 gallons x 100ft² ÷ 100gallons = 2,646ft² of required landscape area

The actual total irrigation field onsite is just less than 10,000ft² which is considerably larger than the minimum required area per code. With this information along with plumbing system design drawings and additional calculations, Khalifeh & Associates sought to have their water saving system approved by the Los Angeles County Building and Safety plancheck department. Such a system had never been approved and thus review of the Khalifeh & Associates proposal was extremely thorough. The county wanted to know, without a doubt, that the system would function properly and that well thought out safety measures would be incorporated to address the possibility of system failure.

                After several attempts to obtain the county’s approval, the engineers at Khalifeh & Associates were able to convince the plancheck department that all of the county’s stringent requirements would be satisfied. Their approval makes the team at Khalifeh & Associates the first consulting engineers to design an approved gray water system in the county of Los Angeles for reducing water consumption and improving the environment.

Jack Khalifeh is president of Khalifeh & Associates Inc. Consulting Engineers, P.E., a multidisciplined, professional engineering firm specializing in mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, lighting, sustainable design, commissioning and energy audit services. Jack is a LEED-accredited professional and a member of the U.S. Green Building Council. Visit www.khalifehassociates.com tel:(310)-305-1555

 

 

Preface by Grant:  Here we have a couple of real-life experiences in the development of a LEED Platinum building.  These brief lessons in the article "Sustainable Facilities - The Standard of the Future" has implications for all experts design-build process.  The author, Keith Pehl, is the president of the multidisciplined professional engineering firm of Optima Engineering, P.A.

Regarding a great new source:  The Green Building Market and Impact Report 2009 by Rob Watson and Greener World Media has just been released . . . . by the way, Rob is known as the "Founding Father of LEED" and of course, is also a Member of the Institute of Green Professionals. Follow the link (above) to Rob's report.

 

Sustainable Facilities – The Standard of the Future
by Keith Pehl

Sustainable design is a responsible business practice. That’s why it is important for energy efficiency and sustainability to become the accepted standard in commercial construction. Not only will sustainable design help protect our environment and preserve our limited natural resources, it will also save businesses money in the long run. And, the more people know about sustainable design, the more likely they are to embrace the concept for their facility.

The ultimate goal of sustainable design is to create net zero-energy buildings that produce as much energy as is consumed. The benefits include reduced energy usage, improved indoor air quality, greater water conservation, and optimized operational and maintenance practices.

Much like the term “fast track” that was popular several years ago, the terms “sustainable” and “energy efficiency” should be part of every building design. You don’t hear the term “fast track” anymore. It was a new concept of speeding up design and construction to deliver a facility faster, but now it is standard operating procedure. Everyone wants their project fast-tracked. I want the same thing to happen for sustainable design.

While both economically and environmentally beneficial, implementing sustainable design techniques can be challenging, so they require the coordination of everyone involved.

My company, Optima Engineering, recently worked on a large department store, and we had to account for the impact of lighting on air conditioning and heating equipment. We reduced the total lighting wattage by more than 50 percent, which extended the lamp life and reduced maintenance needs – both sustainable features. The department store’s mechanical engineer installed 80 tons less air conditioning equipment because of the decreased heat emitted from the lighting system during summer. The reduced amount of equipment lowered construction costs and the amount of energy required to run the building.

However, the mechanical engineer did not account for the reduced heat produced by the lamps during winter, so the first time the heating system was used, the building could not get warm. To fix the problem, they installed electric duct heaters to give the heating system a boost on cold days. The solution still uses less energy overall, and it was a good lesson about how much heat lighting systems can provide for commercial buildings.

We learned another lesson with our own office, which is certified LEED Platinum. We had an energy model that was 30 percent below the industry baseline, but our energy usage doubled the model when we first moved into our building. After refining the lighting and mechanical controls, we were able to drop below 30 percent of the baseline. The lesson showed that energy modeling does work, but it highlighted the importance of commissioning and constantly monitoring energy usage to keep complex building systems working at peak efficiency.

One of the easiest ways to create sustainable facilities is to incorporate great design practices without adding to the owner’s budget. The crucial element is good planning. Since it can be difficult to identify sustainable solutions, it’s important to seek out experienced professionals who are familiar with multiple types of facilities and understand the different design techniques required for successful projects.

In my business, it is important to lead by example. Our 16,000-square-foot LEED Platinum office space is within a LEED Silver-certified building with rooftop solar thermal and solar photovoltaic systems. Solar photovoltaic panels on Optima's roofWe provide tours of our office and our roof at least three times a week. We offer seminars several times a month to educate our clients and the public about renewable energy, energy efficiency and other aspects of sustainable design.

Convincing facility owners to choose sustainable design is not always easy. That’s why it is also important to teach people about the total cost of building ownership. We have to start thinking more long-term. Sustainable design practices are almost always less expensive when you look at the total cost of ownership rather than the initial capital cost.

If planned properly, the costs of building sustainable facilities are comparable to “non-green” buildings. And, sustainable buildings bring the added benefits of reducing environmental impacts and providing a healthy working environment.

__________ 

Keith Pehl is president of Charlotte, N.C.-based Optima Engineering, P.A., a multidisciplined, professional

Preface by Grant:  This is a new piece by IGP Fellow, Mark Stetz.  If you are attending Greenbuild in Phoenix, he will be teaching Building Performance Verification - drop by and say hello.  The topic of a disparity between LEED building performance expectations and the reality of its performance is relevant to everyone in sustainable development because it has the potential to impact client/owner satisfaction with the project, occupancy, lease rates, marketability, and value.  Additionally, it has the potential to become a professional liability or "standard of care" issue/dispute.

USGBC Addresses Performance Anxiety
by Mark Stetz P.E., CMVP FIGP

In my last article, I discussed how LEED-certified buildings might not live up to expectations when their performance is objectively evaluated. While newly constructed LEED-certified buildings are designed to be energy-efficient, design intent is not always realized in the construction and commissioning phases. Frankel & Turner [1] showed that despite good intentions, about 20% of the LEED-certified buildings in their study didn’t perform to code.

The USGBC has been aware of this problem for some time, but now the LEED community and to some extent the general public are also aware of the ‘performance gap’ between expectations and achievement. The release of LEED 3.0 attempts to address this issue by doubling the available points for energy efficiency, raising the threshold against which savings are based, placing added emphasis on measurement & verification, and instituting minimum program requirements (MPRs) that will allow USGBC direct access to utility bill information. Yet the LEED certification process remains fundamentally an intent-based system. 

 Rather than sequestering itself in back rooms and issuing directives, the USGBC is using an open process of soliciting feedback and ideas for improving the LEED program. The Building Performance Initiative committee (BPI) held five meetings across the country and invited stakeholders – developers, owners, architects, and engineers – to discuss the current New Construction certification process. How might it be improved so that LEED certification actually indicates something more than good intentions?

I attended the Washington D.C. meeting where discussions revolved around whether New Construction certification should use design-based or performance-based methodology.

In a performance-based system, certification would be granted after occupancy and utility bill evaluation show that the building actually met design intent. One path is to grant conditional certification based on design and final certification based on performance. Another would be to require annual updates based on performance similar to the Energy Star program. The last would be to have buildings certified under the New Construction program enroll in EB/OM.

Before an actual methodology can be developed, the USGBC and building community still have to decide if New Construction certification should continue to be designed-based or make the leap to performance-based. One proposal – although discussed in somewhat facetious terms but with an element of truth to it – is to make the LEED plaque removable [2]. However, no one volunteered to be the person with the crowbar.

If the USGBC were a democracy, a performance-based approach would have passed by a wide margin with the Washington crowd, but regions. The San Francisco meeting was unanimous in wanting a performance-based system and they wanted it yesterday; the New York meeting wanted nothing to do with performance verification - so we were told - and felt design intent was sufficient.

Interestingly, the minimum program requirement of utility-bill access was seen by some owners/developers as being necessary, others felt it to be a deal-breaker and would walk away from LEED certification rather than allow outsiders access to their records. To his credit, Brendan Owens the USGBC's VP of Technical Development, stated he’d opt to lose potential participants rather than sacrifice program credibility.

Marcus Sheffer, head of the Energy & Atmosphere Technical Advisory Group (EA TAG), spoke regarding pending changes for LEED 2012 and how best to address the performance gap. He believes the role of building modeling should be to evaluate design alternatives, not to try to predict actual building performance with high precision.  Additional questions being addressed include identifying the proper metric to evaluate building performance – is energy use intensity (EUI) the right number, or should a building be evaluated based on energy cost, source energy, carbon dioxide emissions, or some combination of these? The ASHRAE 189P committee is struggling with this same issue.

Identifying an appropriate baseline and threshold will make a difference in the starting point against which savings or performance is compared. To improve the potential for performance verification, alternative compliance paths for EA5 (Measurement & Verification) are being considered.

Other barriers to translating intent into performance include architects who are primarily concerned with  aesthetics and functionality rather than building energy use, the lack of a feedback loop between those who pay the utility bills and those who operate the buildings, and contractual or legal barriers that add unnecessary roadblocks.

As an example of potential legal obstacles, the city of Arlington, VA, now requires all new buildings to seek LEED certification as a condition of occupancy. Requiring a performance review would put their buildings in a Catch-22 situation: a certificate of occupancy requires LEED certification; LEED certification would require occupancy and performance evaluation. Which will come first?

The fundamental question being asked is: do buildings that don’t achieve their design intent have the right to claim LEED certification? Some argue that yes they do, since LEED certification is recognition that the design is superior to other buildings, but there were several different proposed methods to make certification conditional or even revocable.

Toward the end of the meeting, Scot Horst explained that the Building Performance Initiative is USGBC’s effort to improve LEED and make it a more useful tool. By collecting utility information on a larger sample of buildings, it is expected that stronger conclusions can be drawn about where the disconnect between intent and performance lies. Unfortunately, conclusions alone are not sufficient. By improving our understanding of the differences, USGBC and ultimately the members of the building community will be in a better position to take action and improve building performance.

Tom Hicks – head of the BPI- asked those present if there were one thing we could do to improve the process and close the performance gap, what would that be? If you have suggestions, please feel free to use the ‘comment’ section of this blog.

The final BPI meeting will be held Friday morning (11/13) at Greenbuild to summarize what the USGBC learned from five different meetings and what actions it will recommend.

 

About the author

Mark Stetz, P.E. CMVP FIGP is the Principal of Stetz Consulting LLC and an energy engineer specializing in building performance verification and energy audits. He will be teaching Building Performance Verification atGreenbuild in 2009 and Measurement & Verification at the ASHRAE Winter Meeting in 2010 and  can be reached throughhttp://www.stetzconsulting.com.

 

1. Energy Performance of LEED® for New Construction Buildings, Cathy Turner, Cathy; Frankel, Mark, New Buildings Institute May 2008http://www.newbuildings.org/measuredPerformance.htm

2. A Better Way to Rate Green Buildings, Henry Gifford 2009,http://www.EnergySavingScience.com

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