Hi Suzy, thank you for your question.

Nowadays you’d be hard pressed to find a major manufacturer or supplier who doesn’t offer a low-emitting option for any of the materials recommended for credits in the Indoor Environmental Quality section of the LEED Building Design & Construction reference guide. ‘Green’ is the new buzz word and everyone’s trying to get in on a piece of the action.

For the New Construction rating system, credits MR4.1-4 relate to low-emitting materials (adhesives and sealants, paints and coatings, flooring systems and composite wood and agrifiber products). And for Schools, all the aforementioned credits are relevant in addition to MRc4.5, Furniture and Furnishings. I’m honestly not sure why this credit is only allowed to be implemented in the Schools rating system, but why ask why…

The New Construction credit template for IEQc4.1, low-emitting adhesives and sealants, for example, requires the responsible person to list all indoor adhesives, sealants and sealant primer products used for the project and input the following information:

· Product Manufacturer

· Product Name / Model

· Product VOC Content (g/L)

· SCAQMD Allowable VOC Content (g/L)

· And the Source of VOC Data

Obviously the easiest source of VOC data would be manufacturer’s data sheets, so this is the supporting information uploaded with the credit template to complete documentation for this credit. Similar information is submitted for the other IEQ low-emitting credits as well.

Documentation submittals for these credits occasionally rival the quantity of pages submitted by EAc1 due to the fact that there is usually a lot of information provided by the contractor for these credits. Always better to err on the safe side and upload everything that might be relevant. You just want to make sure to include materials for all the products you list that shows the VOC content you’re claiming on the credit template.

Examples of IEQc4 documentation (under various rating systems, the newest of which is LEEDv2.2) can be found at http://www.greencampus.harvard.edu/theresource/leed-submit/nc/index.php. Manufacturers we utilized for these credits at my company’s LEED Platinum certified building included 3M, BASF, Childers, DAP, Forbo, Gardner-Gibson, Henry, Lees, Marshfield, Roseburg Sherwin Williams, Tremco and Versico.

Hope this helps!

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