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New or existing hardscapes?
This credit is fairly straightforward and easy to achieve if you are newly creating all the hardscapes. You may comply by applying prescriptive design measures outlined by LEED to 50% of your site’s hardscape, or by covering 50% of your project's parking spaces.
There can be added costs and labor if your project needs to modify existing hardscapes to meet the prescriptive goals of the credit: for example, taking out a black asphalt parking lot to install a more reflective material.
When dealing with existing hardscapes, it may be more cost-effective to shade areas with trees and architectural canopies than to replace them. This credit can be unattainable if your project’s hardscapes do not already comply and you do not have control over the design of hardscapes. ...
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6 Comments
Parking Lot Tree Canopy Coverage
We have been attempting to achieve this credit with tree canopy coverage in our parking lot. Two questions:
1.) What counts as 'shade' - 50% coverage per parking space?
2.) At what time of day/ year is shade measured from? (I have come across an old project that leads me to believe it's measured on the summer solstice when the sun is at the highest point in the sky.)
Rebecca, the calculations in the NC version 2.2 Reference Guide state that shade coverage "shall be calculated at 10am, noon, and 3 pm. The arithmetic mean of these three values will be used as the effective shaded area." The v2.2 credit doesn't specify the date for which to calculate these areas, but my understanding is to use the summer solstice, June 21st. (That's made clear in the v2009 credit language.)
In terms of what % constitutes shade, it's measured in terms of the whole parking area—50% or more must be shaded. So a single space shaded at 50% would only could at 50% toward the necessary total.
Existing Roof - to test or not?
Hi, I'm using option 2 and am placing half of the parking under cover w/an SRIThe solar reflectance index (SRI) is a measure of a material's ability to reject solar heat, as shown by a small temperature rise. Standard black (reflectance 0.05, emittance 0.90) is 0 and standard white (reflectance 0.80, emittance 0.90) is 100. For example, a standard black surface has a temperature rise of 90_F (50_C) in full sun, and a standard white surface has a temperature rise of 14.6_F (8.1_C). Once the maximum temperature rise of a given material has been computed, the SRI can be calculated by interpolating between the values for white and black. Materials with the highest SRI values are the coolest choices for paving. Because of the way SRI is defined, particularly hot materials can even take slightly negative values, and particularly cool materials can even exceed 100. > 29. There is an existing light colored modified bituminous roof in place; however I do not know the manufacturer. Do I need to have it tested and if so, how do I go about finding a laboratory?
Thanks,
Nicole
Yes, I would say you have to test it. I would try the yellow pages, Google, etc. for testing labs in your region.
Outdoor Track
Our school project has an outdoor track made of rubber. Is this considered a hardscape or can it count as open space?
Thanks
Sounds like it would be considered hardscape - the glossary of the BD&C Reference Guide defines open space as "vegetated and pervious." There are some exceptions, such as for projects in densely developed areas earning SSc2, so you'd want to look into those.
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