Big Green: Material/ Product Subcomponents

[Andrew Gil]

Big Greeners,

We’re working on a fairly ambitiously Green project, and one that has a
large cast of experienced and knowledgeable green building enthusiasts. This
combination of target and team experience is resulting in more detailed
questions than we’ve had to wrestle with before, particularly with the MR
credits. Most of the questions derive from a big-picture question of how
much a team needs to break-down a material and/or product into
sub-components. The best example that I can remember us hashing over was in
reviewing compliance of wood panel products with MR 4 Recycled Content; one
of the team reviewed both Reference Guide and CIRs and concluded that we
should contact the manufacturer to determine the quantity (by weight) of
glue used in each panel and subtract that before calculating percent
(monetary) compliance. That then quickly led to questions about using
weights to determine subcomponent percentage composition (before then
translating into monetary values) versus  subtracting the monetary value of
glues in order to derive an adjusted panel value, etc.

And we’ve run into similar questions with other actions. Another example :
When considering applying MR 5 to aluminum windows, it was quickly decided
that non-compliant sub-components such as rubber gasketing obviously have to
be removed before the  percent compliance calculations begin, but then a
question was asked about all the various additives used in the glass
manufacturing process; are each of these supposed to be removed (by weight)?
It seems logical to me to argue that of course they do, but it also seems to
be an impossible task, practically speaking. Has anyone gotten down to this
level of analysis with the MR points?

Many Thanks,

Andrew M. Gil, AIA
Architect, LEED-Accredited Professional

HOLT Architects, P.C.
217 N. Aurora St.
Ithaca, NY 14850
p. 607 273-7600
f. 607 273-0475
http://www.holt.com


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.biggreen.org/pipermail/biggreen/attachments/20080116/d7761d11/attachment.html