LEED Paperwork - Defaults Overridden

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Good Morning All,

I know this has come up in the past and I have seen several responses from
going through and counting all of the schedules to just estimating.
Regardless of how you have determined this value has anyone then included a
description of how this was done in their narrative, or has anyone ever
gotten any questions from their reviewer about how the number was tabulated?
Also has anyone ever left it blank as an unquantifiable number? I think I
could spend days trying to count every default of my model and still be off
by hundreds.

Thanks for any feedback,

____________________________
Michael Shields

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Michael,
My suggestion - don't waste time on "defaults overridden". You can't
leave it blank - the online template won't let you. For my first
submission, I put "1776" and "2008" (years - I was feeling patriotic),
but the reviewer asked why I changed so many defaults. So I lowered it
closer to zero. Try putting numbers less than 20 and change them if your
reviewer asks about it.
Regards,
Bill

William Bishop, PE, BEMP, LEED(r) AP

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i've had comments on it both ways (entering zero, entering 200 for both,
having different values for both). the comment for me has been
something along the lines of "default value over-rides is listed but no
supporting documentation provided indicating how the numbers were
arrived at."

i end up replying the number is approximate considering equest doesn't
default to 90.1 (any year) values so the proposed design is reflective
of the changes made to equest's default values & the baseline is close,
but may have more, as it is modified from the proposed design to reflect
90.1-(2004/2007) but neither is reflective of changes to default 90.1
values.

Patrick J. O'Leary, Jr.'s picture
Joined: 2011-09-30
Reputation: 200

Yes, I?d echo Bill?s advice here. Estimate a reasonable number and run with it ? like the Target Finder score, this information is used as a soft check for the model?s ?reasonableness?, but it also depends on the modeling software. I?ve had one question before about why so many defaults were overridden, and my response was basically ?you can?t incorporate Appx G or the proposed design in eQUEST without overriding many, many defaults? (the project was accepted).

DAKOTA KELLEY

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I can confirm this as well (that you should just ballpark the number). Try
to consider this from a LEED reviewer's point of view tho; they are really
looking to see if you changed any value abnormally. I think the original
intent was "Major defaults overridden". So, for instance, if you changed
default load methodologies, or something that most users do not change, that
is what they want to know about. However, if many people are putting
hundreds of defaults overridden, this may become what the LEED reviewer
expects to see anyway.

I have to say the reviewers have gotten pretty savvy over the last few years
and most of them probably see that you are using eQUEST, and then they
understand (because eQUEST has so many defaults, by it's nature of being a
fast simulation tool). Remember that some reviewers are more familiar with
certain software, so if they ask, it's likely that they aren't too familiar
with eQUEST, and you need to explain that eQUEST has defaults for nearly
every value (though in my experience, eQUEST is the most well-known by LEED
reviewers).

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I just finished a LEED review comment/response with a reviewer where I entered zeroes - there was no comment to this entry. It's hard to judge, but I would place this reviewer as someone higher-ranking than "eQuest novice" but neither is he/she a seasoned veteran (I had to resist the urge to correct the manner in which certain reports were used to perform the review... I have to remind myself that's not my job!).

Whether this input is even considered is ultimately up to the individual reviewer as everyone is saying, so I also suggest using just zeroes on your first submittal, rather than potentially wasting time coming up with a guess.

To my knowledge, there is simply no reasonably quick process to accurately determine the number of red and blue input fields used in a model.

Here's a stab in the dark though:

Open your project's .inp file in Microsoft Word 2007. Ctrl+f and input the text ".." without quotes, then press the "Find in ? Main document" button. It will return the number of instances your .inp contains ".." Assume that each unique BDL component is a "default override" and feed the reviewer that number explaining how you got it, if they really want to see something other than zero.

NICK CATON, E.I.T.

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