What can we help you with?
At Green Badger, we pride ourselves on transparency and clarity. We want to be on the same page as our users throughout your project license.
Basics
There are two ways to change your password.
- Click Account Settings, and update password
- OR – Use the Reset Password link on the login page. Enter your email address and you’ll be sent a link to reset your password. Follow the link and create a new password for your account.
- Once you are logged into Green Badger, you can create a project by clicking the ADD button in the upper right corner.
- Select the appropriate LEED Rating system (LEED 2009 NC, LEED v4, BD+C, etc), and the LEED project subtype (New Construction, Core and Shell).
- Fill out any relevant project details (address, start/end dates) and click the ADD button to create your project.
- Project activation requires a paid project license. Contact demo@getgreenbadger.com to confirm project duration and payment to activate your project.
Your project dashboard can be customized to only display the LEED construction credits your project is pursuing. To customize the dash, click EDIT on your project header, then Manage LEED Credits in the top right corner. Review your LEED scorecard and for any credit/option that is not targeted, select Not Pursuing from the dropdown menu for the credit. You can always turn credits back on if your scorecard changes down the road!
The materials credits have 2 options available. If you’re scorecard only shows 1 point, the most commonly pursued options are:
- Environmental Product Declarations – Option 1
- Sourcing of Raw Materials – Option 2
- Material Ingredient Reporting – Option 1
You can easily edit which credits are displayed on your dashboard within your credit workflow, to add and remove the credits that your project is going for based on your LEED scorecard. Click the “edit” button on your dashboard, there’s a button that says “manage LEED credits”. Select that and simply, any credits you’re not pursuing, move to “not pursuing”. Note that the credit language & titles reflect LEED v4 – for example, you’ll see “50% compliance” rather than “5 products” for EPD option 2 – but you can easily see what the credit is and whether it’s option 1 or 2, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re using LEED v4 or v4.1. Just find the option, select whether you’re pursuing it or not, and move it in that direction. By default, all options are turned on when you start your project, and you can turn these on or off at any time. Even if you decide down the road that you want to go for a credit, you can simply turn it on, and if you have any entries contributing to that, they will appear. So you are never at risk of not being able to enter or see that data, it’s simply a visual display of the credits you are going for or not.
Green Badger’s dashboard is set up to track two main things: where your project is in construction, and how well it’s performing across its LEED goals. Where it is in construction is shown in this green progress bar. That’s based on whatever you’ve entered for your start & end dates, and is just a percentage of that based on schedule.
Beneath, you have your LEED credit status. Progress is tracked color-coded. If it’s red, the team has not made any entries contributing to that credit. If it’s yellow, you’re making progress but haven’t hit a threshold for any points. Dark green means you’re currently earning one point. Bright green is two points, and bright blue is three points. For the inspection-based credits of erosion control & indoor air quality where there’s not a certain LEED threshold, those just stay grey and show a count of how many inspections have been created.
The dials represent progress towards earning a LEED credit. The value displayed is specific to each credit/option based on what the specific LEED threshold is. For example, 79% is Construction Waste means that the project is currently diverted 79% of its waste. If 17 is displayed in EPD Option 1, the project currently has 17 products with environmental product declarations. Low Emitting represents the number of compliant product categories earned, and Erosion Control and IAQ Inspections shows the total number of inspections that have been completed.
The colors change as progress towards meeting LEED thresholds is made. If no entries have been made, the dials will be red. Once entries have begun, the dial will turn yellow, indicating progress is being made:
- Dark Green indicates 1 LEED point is being earned, Bright Green is 2 points, and Bright Blue is 3 points (Exemplary Performance).
- Grey dials are displayed for credits where there is not a right or wrong LEED threshold. There is not a required number of IAQ or ESC reports that need to be completed, so those dials remain grey.
You can export reports from Green Badger at any time. Click the EXPORT button in the top Right corner, and select what you would like to export. If you export a single file, it will be available to download. If you select multiple options, you’ll download a zip file. When the export is ready, you will see a note in the Top Left appear that says ‘Export Successful – Download Here’. Click the ‘Download Here’ link to download and save wherever your internet downloads go. You’ll also receive an email with a link to download when the export is complete.
Construction Waste – LEED Construction and Demolition Waste Calculator, Waste Tickets (zip file of all uploaded waste tickets), Waste Log (excel log of everything in Green Badger), and Construction Waste Management Plan if the team has uploaded it. You’ll submit the Calculator and CWM Plan to LEED online.
Sustainable Materials – Materials Calculator (LEED Building Product and Disclosure Optimization Calculator) – this is USGBC’s BPDO calculator (Excel) required for submission, Product Data Sheets (Zip file off all product data sheets. You’ll get a separate zip file for each credit/option with all your EPDs, HPDs, etc). This can be a very large file depending on how many products you’ve tracked, so be patient!
Low Emitting Materials – Low Emitting Materials Calculator – this is USGBC’s low-emitting calculator (Excel) required for your documentation. Product data sheets – Zip file of all VOC and Emissions data sheets. The zip file will contain multiple zip files for each product category.
Erosion and Sedimentation Control – All Reports – Zip file with pdfs of all ESC reports created using Green Badger, Images- Zip file of all pictures taken using Green Badger, Third Party Reports – Zip file with pdfs of all third-party reports uploaded to Green Badger, Erosion Control Management Plan – PDF of the project erosion control plan if uploaded by the team. Individual reports can be exported using the XX Button on the right side of each report.
Indoor Air Quality Management – All Reports – Zip file with pdfs of all IAQ reports created using Green Badger, Images- Zip file of all pictures taken using Green Badger, IAQManagement Plan – PDF of the project IAQ plan if uploaded by the team. Individual reports can be exported using the XX Button on the right side of each report.
Some credits require written action plans as part of the documentation requirement. For construction credits, this includes Construction Waste Management and Indoor Air Quality Management. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel! Click to access our editable templates for a IAQ Management Plan Template and Construction Waste Management Plan Template.
NOTE: There is a space in Erosion Control to upload the project’s Erosion and Sedimentation Control Plan. This plan is typically created by the project’s civil engineer and is not something the general contractor needs to create. The general contractor needs to implement the measures in the plan, and verify they are being maintained, but is not the one who actually creates the plan. If you check the civil drawings in your construction documents, you’ll likely find it there.
Kick back and have a cold one! Green Badger will continue to host your project information in read-only format, so you can always come back and check things out. Here’s our suggested workflow once your project is complete. Export each credit by using the Export button in the top Right corner. Select all the options for each credit to ensure you’ll have a complete project file. Download the associated zip files and save locally or to your corporate server so you will have off-line access to all project information. If you haven’t done so, upload all calculators and required backup information to LEED Online.
LEED Online may be the most frustrating thing currently available on the internet. You should only go to LEED Online once your project documentation is complete and you have no further edits, updates or reports to do. There are slight variations for your LEED Online requirements depending on which rating system and version you are using. Assuming you’ve already exported everything from Green Badger, here are the typical next steps.
Each credit has multiple options within LEED Online.
Form: The form is the LEED Online template you fill out with final project compliance. It varies by credit, but typically they will ask for your method of compliance, and let you know any required uploads. For this credit, it would ask how many EPDs the project had, and let you know to upload the completed BPDO calculator. If additional backup documentation was required (i.e. the actual EPDS) the form would tell you. Fill in the fields for the Option you are attempting, enter your name at the bottom, and click Save.
Thresholds: Some credits have multiple credit options or point levels. In the thresholds tab, you’ll select the option you are pursuing. In this example, you would indicate if you were pursuing EPD Option 1, Option 2 or both.
Uploads: This tab is where you upload any required project documentation that was identified in the Form.
Upload any required project information. You can only upload 1 file at a time, so have fun with that! In this case, you would upload the BPDO calculator. If the form asks for the actual EPDs, just upload the zip file with all the EPDs you exported from Green Badger. You don’t have to upload the EPDs one by one.
Credit Library: This tab links to the USGBC’s overall LEED Credit Library and is where you’ll find the official credit requirements.
Education: USGBC has a partnership with the good people at LEEDUser to help demystify all the nuances of LEED. They are a great resource to really go down some rabbit holes if you’ve got more questions on a specific topic.
LEED v4.1 Opt-in – Last but not least, you’ll see a little circle all the way on the right hand side of the screen with an up and down arrow. This is how you opt a credit into LEED v4.1. If the circle is not already BLUE, as in the example, that means the credit has not yet opted into v4.1 To do so, simply Click the circle, and hit Confirm on the next screen, and you’re set.
You can add or remove project team members in your main project dashboard. Navigate to the “project team” button, to add a user simply scroll down to “invite new members”, select a user role, enter their email (if you’re going to send multiple invitations just include a comma and a space between email addresses), click send, and they’ll get a link to join the project. To remove team members, just find the team member you want to remove, click the red trash can, and they’ll be removed from the project and no longer have access.
Click the ‘Project Team’ button in the top right corner of your project dashboard. Click the drop down under ‘Role’ for the applicable team member and select their new user role.
LEED v4.1 should be used without a doubt for the BPDO and Low-Emitting Credits, and most likely will help you with Construction Waste Management. Within Green Badger, you opt into V4.1 on a credit by credit basis.
First, make sure you’ve selected a LEED Rating System Subtype on your Project Details page.
In the credits you want to use LEED v4.1 with, select LEED v4.1 in the dropdown menu in the top right hand side of the credit screen. That’s it! The system will take it from there.
To set up a credit in LEED Online for v4.1
Log into LEED Online, select the Credits tab, and find the credit you want to use LEED v4.1 on. you’ll see a little circle all the way on the right hand side of the screen with an up and down arrow.
To opt into v4.1, simply click the circle, and hit Confirm on the next screen, and you’re set.
Waste
There are two points available for construction & demolition waste management, both using LEED v4 and v4.1. The jury’s still out on whether 4.1 is a better option, but thankfully you can simply toggle back & forth at the end of the project and see which one you’re scoring higher on. For LEED v4, it’s a 50% threshold and a 75% threshold, which just looks at the total amount of waste you’ve generated and how much you’ve been able to recycle. You do need to have multiple waste streams, which means different types of materials, to earn points under v4. In v4.1, there is one point available for 50% diversion, you don’t need any different waste streams for that so it’s pretty easy to get. Option 2, however, looks at pounds per square foot. So that is going to take the total amount of waste you’ve generated, recycled or not, and divide it by your project’s square footage. If it’s less than 15 lb/sq ft for new construction you can earn a point, less than 12.5lb/sq ft you can earn a second point, and for interiors that goes down to 10lb/sq ft. So again, record all of your waste, see if you end up with a diversion % that gets you the points you need – if you need two, you need 75% for v4 – you can always toggle over to v4.1 and see if you are under that lb/sq ft ratio to earn those additional points.
To make a waste entry, as with all credits, the first thing you do is click the “add” button in the upper-right-hand corner. There are a couple of different ways you can make entries. First, you’re gonna select what the material is you’re recycling – concrete – and what did you do with it? If it’s in its own dumpster on-site, it is considered “Recycled – source separated”, so you simply select that option. You put in the total amount – we had 5 tons of concrete, and we recycled all of it. In this case, that’s 100%, your diverted waste equals your total waste. Simply add each additional material – say, we also had a wood dumpster, select wood. It was recycled, there were 2 tons of it, and we recycled all of it. For your waste – the same thing, we have a waste dumpster on site. Simply pick “waste”, that option went to the landfill, none of that is diverted, and put in the total quantity (2 tons). If you have commingled recycling, meaning it’s in one dumpster and they’re simply saying you’re at a certain percentage, simply add it as a waste, pick that it was commingled, the material stream is commingled, percent ADC or alternative daily cover – if they’re using some of that for daily cover, put in what percent that is, otherwise you can leave it blank. And otherwise, just put in the total amount of waste you’ve had, and how much of that was generated, and that will calculate your diversion percentage. Then, simply put in the hauler, the date, and upload the waste report you got those values from, and you are good to go. Some commingled reports will give it to you by material, in that case, you are more than welcome to add it by material – so we have asphalt, commingled recycled, again putting in our weights and diversions. If they are actually sorting that, and weighing that, per your load, you can consider that “Recycled – source-separated”, so in that case enter it by material as “recycled – source-separated” because they are separating it and weighing it for you. If you are just doing regular old commingled for everything, you will want to get some type of waste diversion letter from that facility letting you know how they are getting those waste totals, and you should be good to go.
To edit or delete waste entries, you can use the universal icons. The ‘pencil’ icon is always used to edit an entry, and the red ‘trash can’ icon is always used to delete an entry. To edit an entry, simply click on the pencil icon and it will open up your entry so you can update any of the fields. If you accidentally put in 5 tons of concrete and it was supposed to be 50, you can simply go into that entry, put in your correct values, and click the update button. If an entry altogether needs to be removed, simply click the red trash can. A notification will ask, “are you sure?” for verification. Select “okay” and it will delete and remove that entry and remove those values from your totals.
Having a construction waste management (CWM) plan is a required part of your documentation to earn these credits. If you need one, you can download a template from our “resources” section: simply go to “resources”, go to construction waste management, select a version, and it will download for you in Word. The waste management plan is really just to say “yes, we are indeed providing some thought into how waste is going to be managed on our project”. We’ve got all the boilerplate language, you just simply fill in your details, but really what it’s looking for is:
- What do you think the materials are going to be on your site? So put a little forethought into that.
- Who is managing it within your organization?
- Who is your vendor, and how are they gonna manage it? Do they have separate dumpsters? Where are they taking those materials? Is it all comingled? What frequency are they going to be removing them?
So again, it’s nothing more than just a little forethought into how waste is going to be successfully managed on your project. Once you have that plan in place, of course, you can distribute it to your subcontractors, and you can also simply upload it into Green Badger by clicking the CWM plan option, and just upload that file, and save it so that the whole team has access. At the end of the day, you will export that report, as well as your construction waste calculator and those are the two items you’ll submit to LEED Online.
There are multiple options to export for construction waste management. For your actual LEED documentation you’ll need to export your Construction Waste Calculator and Construction Waste Management Plan, which is a required upload. For backup, you can get a zip file of all your waste tickets, and if you want an Excel version of the complete log, versus just the construction waste calculator, you can export that as well. Just select the options you want to export, click “export”, and it’ll generate a zip file that you can download at your convenience.
Construction Waste exports available in Green Badger:
• LEED Construction and Demolition Waste Calculator
• Waste Tickets (zip file of all uploaded waste tickets)
• Waste Log (excel log of everything in Green Badger)
• and your Construction Waste Management Plan if the team has uploaded it!
You’ll submit the Calculator and CWM Plan to LEED online.
ESC
To earn the prerequisite for construction activity pollution prevention, erosion, and sedimentation control, project teams need to have an erosion control plan that was developed in accordance with the EPA’s General Construction Permit. This is an example of the plan, it’ll show you all the various erosion measures for a project, where they are on-site, and how they go in. The contractor simply needs to implement the measures as shown on the plan, and perform monthly inspections verifying that those measures are in place and continuing to function. Sometimes those are performed more frequently – weekly, biweekly, or after rain events – but from a LEED perspective, monthly is sufficient. You can just make notes, take pictures, show that yes, all the measures are still installed, and submitted, and at the end of the project you will upload a few of those inspection reports to LEED online for their review.
There are two primary ways to manage your erosion & sedimentation control reports with Green Badger. Entering the portal, you will have two options: you can add new reports, or you can upload third-party. If you have a vendor or subcontractor who’s doing it, or you have a form you have to use in PDF, you can simply log that on a weekly or monthly basis by clicking “third party report”, enter a name & date, then upload the PDF.
If you’d like to use our mobile app, the system makes it really easy. What you can do is go in and customize the erosion control measures you have in your project based on your ESC plan. Simply go to the list of measures you have in the plan, turn anything off that you don’t have or on that, you do have, feel free to add something on your own if you do indeed something we don’t have, then you can use our mobile app or the web platform to go in and create those inspections.
So the mobile app looks like this, go to your erosion controls, add a report, fill in some background information, definitely need to give it a name, you can do a phase, qualifications, weather, select to make sure those plans are up to date, and then pick your report frequency. Other than that, just walk the site and visually inspect to make sure all of those measures are compliant.
Hopefully, they are, so you’re just selecting “yes”, you can add comments, photos from your phone camera or photo library, and just continue to walk the site indicating that everything is in good shape or needs improvement. If it does need improvement, you will need to do corrective measures, and reinspect to show they are compliant. At the end of the day, you can sign your report, it’ll invent a little certification statement, just save it into your project, and you’re good to go.
Low Emitting Materials exports available in Green Badger:
• Low Emitting Materials Calculator – this is USGBC’s low-emitting calculator (Excel) required for your documentation.
• Product data sheets – Zip file of all VOC and Emissions data sheets. The zip file will contain multiple zip files for each product category.
Materials
There are three credits, with a total of six points available, for the BPDO credits.
First, it’s essential you are using LEED v4.1 for these credits so make sure to opt-in. You can do so just by toggling in the upper-right-hand corner. I’m not even going to talk about v4 since it makes absolutely no sense to use v4 for these credits.
Environmental product declarations (EPDs) have two options: option one is to use 20 products for new construction, or 10 for commercial/interiors/core & shell/warehouse, products that have EPDs. You can use a dollar of those products or ten million, doesn’t matter, they all count the same. Once you hit that threshold of 10 or 20 products, you will be earning the point.
Option two is simply 5 products that have an optimized EPD, which shows a reduction in the global warming potential of those products. There are not that many out there, but you do only need five of them to earn that credit. Sourcing raw materials is one credit, there are two point thresholds: one is at 15% by cost, for products that have things like recycled content and FSC certified wood. There is a second point available at 30%. That number is based off of your total materials cost for divisions 3-10, materials only, not labor. In this case, that’s $4.5 million. So 15% of that number is $700k. I would need $700k of compliant product to earn the sourcing credit.
The material ingredients credit has the same thresholds as EPDs. You need 20 products with transparency documentation for their ingredients on new construction, 10 products on commercial interiors/core & shell/warehouse, and 5 products that have an EPD on ingredient optimization.
What does that look like? Where is all that documentation? Green Badger is here for you as well. Go to our website, under “resources” at getgreenbadger.com, you will find “The Ultimate Guide to LEED Construction”, which will take you through credit-by-credit. We also provide ebooks that go in detail for every one of those credits, with examples of what is compliant documentation, how you read it, and where should you look to find those products. So if you need some additional information, go to getgreenbadger.com and find our resources, you will have access to all these ebooks which will help you fully understand what you need to do to find compliant products for all your EPDO credits.
As with all credits in Green Badger, you always make a new entry by clicking the “add” button in the upper-right-hand corner. There are two options: first, you can search our database by brand name, product name, manufacturer, and even keyword or division number. You can always add your own product if you’d rather upload it or if there’s something we don’t have.
To search the database, just type the product name – say you have Armstrong ceiling tiles, so type Armstrong – hit search, you’ve got all these different products, so you can scroll through, find the product, and add it to the project. If it’s in the database, we are providing you with all that backup documentation, so all you need to do is add it in and you are good to go.
It’s best to search broadly. for example, I put “Armstrong” instead of “Armstrong Cirrus Ceiling Tile” because if your spelling’s off or you put in something too different, the system might not return it. So we always suggest you search broadly so you can find your products, simply click “add”, if it’s cost-based you can put it in here, and then save it into your project.
You can also add multiple products, so if this was your ceiling tile submittal, perhaps you’re using this ceiling suspension system and multiple ceiling tiles, you can simply pick them all and then just add them all into your project, it’ll put multiple products in, update your totals, and you are good to go. If we don’t have a product or you want to upload it yourself, click “add”, and then simply select the option to “create customs”. Then, it’s fill in the blanks: what’s your material, who’s it from, what did it cost, you have the option to enter submittal numbers & subcontractor if you want to use that for tracking in your log, otherwise simply find the option that you have documentation on and fill in the blanks. If you found an EPD we didn’t have, you would simply type in who it’s from, the program operator, what type is it – almost all of them are Product-specific Type III External EPDs – there are other options that you can select, but if it is for a specific product it is most likely Type III External EPDs. Select that option and then upload your EPD.
Same for any other credit: if you found something with recycled content just check the box, put in your values, upload your cutsheet, and if you have any type of reporting, simply pick from the dropdown menu of the different reporting mechanisms, upload that document, hit “save”, and it will pull it into your log and you are good to go.
A common question is “Why are my dials not updating? I’ve got all these entries in here, why is SRM still 0?” The most common answer is that no value has been entered for total construction cost or actual materials cost, meaning it’s dividing your entries by 0. Once you put in a value, which is required, it will do the calculation. So if I enter in my project cost of $10 million, for total construction cost, it will use the LEED default ratio to calculate that as $4.5 million and now my percentages are calculated. For your EPD and ingredient reporting, sometimes products are not a full product – so if you have a lifecycle analysis that only counts as half a product – LEED does not round up, so this number might really be 61.5, it’s not going to show you 62 because it doesn’t round up.
To document your source and raw materials, you’re gonna need a baseline value for your cost, for divisions 3-10, materials only. The easiest way to do that is to take your total schedule values for divisions 3-10 and put that value in here. LEED uses a 45% ratio to establish your materials cost, which becomes the basis of those calculations. You can update that number at any point, or you can use the “actual materials cost” field. If you’re separately tracking all of your contracts and breaking down materials vs. labor, you might have your actual materials cost for divisions 3-10 and put that in here. You’ll see this is currently greyed out, that’s because this value is already in. If I wanted to switch and use the actual materials cost, or vice versa if you entered the actual materials cost, simply delete the value you had and the other will become available. That will reset your total value.
Depending on the size of your project, how many entries you’ve had, and how long you’ve been using it, it may take a couple of seconds to refresh, but just give it a moment and you’ll see you can now enter here. If I delete this value, I will now be able to re-enter here. I’ll note there is an option to auto-sum what is in your log that you can use, that will calculate your values, but unless you’re entering every single product in your log with cost, that’s not going to give you an accurate representation. We think the easiest way is your total construction costs, divisions 3-10, and use the default value. If you track that separately, give the actual materials costs, either way just give it a second and those fields will open up so you can edit them.
If you’re not finding as many products as you’d think using our search, it’s best to just broaden your search a little bit. For example, if I searched “Sherwin Williams Promar 200 Low-Zero VOC Paint”, I’m not going to get any results. If I was to search a little more broadly – “Sherwin Williams” – now I’ve got all sorts of results, 46 different products, and I can find my paint. So if you use a bunch of keywords that might not show up, it will restrict your search. It is user friendly, so if you misspell something it’ll still show up, so if I put in “sherwun williams” it’ll return the same amount of results, or if I search “promar 200” I can find all of those paints as well. So there you go, broaden your search a little bit, and I’m sure you will find hundreds or thousands of products you can use in your project.
When exporting for the BPDO credits, you have two options. The first is the Materials Calculator which is the building product & optimization calculator, the second is your project data sheets, which is all your backup documentation. You will get a zip file for each credit and each option, with all of the backup in its own individual zip file. Currently, you need to upload both of these for your final documentation to USGBC. Within each form, you will upload the materials calculator and then the relevant zip file with all the backup documentation. Export them both and you will get a zip file with all your product data sheets and your final materials calculator, ready to go directly to LEED online.
Sustainable Materials exports available in Green Badger:
• Materials Calculator (LEED Building Product and Disclosure Optimization Calculator) – this is USGBC’s BPDO calculator (Excel) required for submission
• Product Data Sheets (Zip file off all product data sheets. You’ll get a separate zip file for each credit/option with all your EPDs, HPDs, etc). This can be a very large file depending on how many products you’ve tracked, so be patient!
Low Emitting
To add low-emitting materials to your project, simply click the “Add” button in the upper-right-hand corner. Green Badger has a database of tens of thousands of products with all your VOC and emissions information. You start typing your brands, perhaps you’re using Hilti Firestop, you can type “Hilti”, then either scroll through your products or start typing to filter down, pick the product you’re using, then in this case we’ve got all the documentation, so you are good to go. If it is a sealant or adhesive paint or coating, pick the subtype that it is, in this case, this would be an architectural sealant, put in a volume or surface area (typically we recommend the volume for sealants, adhesives, paints, and coatings), if it’s any of the other product categories it’s done by cost. But fill in a value so that it calculates correctly, hit “save”, and you’re good to go.
There may be an occasion where we don’t have the product you’re using. In that case, when you go to add it, nothing will come up as you start to type that – either brand or product. If there are no results and it just says “new”, that means we don’t have it. Simply click the “new” button, fill in the rest of your details, pick the LEED category that it falls into, add your cost or volume, and then how does it meet the General Emissions Evaluation? You should have some type of documentation that shows this for a product to be compliant, most likely it is the California Department of Public Health standard, v 1.2-2017, or a European version. Simply pick what you have, from that certificate you will have a total VOC range, and then simply upload that certificate, and hit save, and you’re good to go.
A question we see a lot is “I’ve made an entry, it’s showing complaint, why is it showing 0?” The typical answer is that a value is not entered for cost or surface area. A positive integer is required in either one of those, otherwise, it reads as a 0 and shows as non-compliant. To fix this, put in a number. Can be any number. If everything’s compliant, it really doesn’t matter, if something’s not compliant you will need those actual costs. But once you do this, it’ll update, and now you’ll see that you are showing compliant.
For products to comply, they will have to show emissions compliance for every category. If it’s a paint/coating/sealant or adhesive, also show VOC compliance. There are a few types of emissions compliance out there, but they all need to say specifically – what standard are they meeting, and what’s the total VOC range. This is an example of a Greenguard Gold certificate, you’ll find it tells you very specifically it meets the California Department of Public Health standard, v 1.2-2017, and then when you come to this page it’ll say the total VOC: 0.5 or less. You’ll need this type of documentation for any product to be considered compliant for your LEED certification. If it is a sealant or adhesive, you’ll also need that VOC content, which is typically your product datasheet or SDS, that shows what your actual VOC content is of your product. In this case, it’s showing >50g/L, which is compliant.
Low Emitting Materials exports available in Green Badger:
• Low Emitting Materials Calculator (this is USGBC’s low-emitting calculator, Excel spreadsheet, required for your documentation)
• Product data sheets – Zip file of all VOC and Emissions data sheets. The zip file will contain multiple zip files for each product category.
Indoor Air Quality
For construction IAQ, there are two export options. You can export an individual report by selecting that report and exporting it on its own. In your final documentation, you do not need to submit every single report to USGBC, so we suggest you select a handful from your log that cover the project, export them, download them, and that is what you submit. You can also export all of your reports, as well as all of your images and your IAQ management plan, using the main export feature. Simply click export, select whether you want all the reports, a separate zip file with all the images, or the IAQ management plan, hit export, and you will get a zip file with all your project documentation.
Indoor Air Quality Management (IAQ) Exports Available in Green Badger:
• All Reports – Zip file with pdfs of all IAQ reports created using Green Badger,
• Images – Zip file of all pictures taken using Green Badger,
• IAQ Management Plan – PDF of the project IAQ plan if uploaded by the team.
Individual reports can be exported using the export button on the right side of each report.
Here are the SMACNA Measures and examples of implementation:
- HVAC Protection – Keep contaminants out of the HVAC system. Do not run permanently installed equipment if possible, or maintain proper filtration if it is used.
- Seal all ductwork, registers, diffusers, and returns with plastic when stored on site or not in service. Seal unfinished runs of ductwork at the end of each day.
- Replace all filtration media before occupancy.
- Do not store materials in mechanical rooms, to reduce potential debris and contamination to mechanical systems.
- Source Control – Keep sources of contaminants out of the building and have a plan to eliminate any that are introduced.
- Use low-toxicity and low-VOC materials to the greatest extent possible.
- Develop protocols for the use of any high- toxicity materials. Isolate areas where high- toxicity materials are being installed and use temporary ventilation for that area.
- Prevent exhaust fumes (from idling vehicles, equipment, and fossil-fueled tools) from entering the building.
- Enforce the no-smoking job site policy.
- Protect stored materials from moisture because absorbent materials exposed to moisture during construction can mold and degenerate long after installation. Store materials in dry conditions indoors, under cover, and off the ground or floor.
- Pathway interruption – Prevent circulation of contaminated air when cutting concrete or wood, sanding drywall, installing VOC-emitting materials, or performing other activities that affect IAQ in other work spaces.
- Isolate areas of work to prevent contamination of other spaces, whether they are finished or not. Seal doorways, windows, or tent off areas as needed using temporary barriers, such as plastic separations. – Provide walk-off mats at entryways to reduce introduced dirt and pollutants.
- Depressurize the work area to allow a differential between construction areas and clean areas. Exhaust to the outdoors using 100% outdoor air, if possible. - Use dust guards and collectors on saws and other tools.
- Housekeeping – Maintaining a clean job site results in fewer IAQ contaminants to manage.
- Maintain good job site housekeeping on a daily basis. Use vacuum cleaners with high-efficiency particulate filters and use sweeping compounds or wetting agents for dust control when sweeping.
- Keep materials organized to improve job site safety as well as indoor air quality.
- Scheduling – Sequence construction activities to reduce air quality problems in new construction projects. For major renovations, coordinate construction activities to minimize or eliminate disruption of operations in occupied areas.
- Keep trades that affect IAQ physically isolated on-site and separated from each other by the construction schedule. For example, schedule drywall finishing and carpet installation for different days or different sections of the building. Consider after-hours or weekend work if practical.
- Install absorptive-finish materials after wet-applied materials have fully cured whenever possible. For example, install carpet and ceiling tile after paints and stains are completely dry.
- If applicable, plan adequate time to conduct a flush-out and/or perform IAQ testing before occupancy, in compliance with EQ Credit Indoor Air Quality Assessment.
- Remove all temporary filtration media and replace them with new filters before occupancy.
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