How Your Flooring Choice Can Help With LEED Certification
by Chris Trageser, Product Manager - The Stonhard Group
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is one of the most popular green building certification programs worldwide. LEED uses a set of ratings developed by the U.S. Green Building Council for design, construction, operation, and maintenance of buildings. This rating system is based on calculations that determine how efficiently trades and products have been used in a building project.
According to the U.S. Green Building Council, “LEED-certified buildings are resource efficient. They use less water and energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As an added bonus, they save money.” Your flooring choice can contribute to the LEED certification of your building project.
Five Factors of Flooring systems that can affect LEED Scoring
While it may not seem like an important part of the qualifying factors for LEED Certification, a floor’s use, its material composition, its effect on waste and air quality all add up to several points for rating a building. Here’s how:
1) A flooring system can be used to rehabilitate an existing building, lessening the need for new facilities. This may qualify for a “Building Reuse” credit.
2) If the flooring product minimizes waste (by using recyclable packaging for instance), it may qualify for a “Construction Waste Management” credit.
3) Flooring systems that contain recycled material (such as glass) may qualify for a “Recycled Content” credit.
4) Flooring systems manufactured using rapidly renewable, bio-based materials may qualify for a “Rapidly Renewable Materials” credit.
5) If the flooring product being installed meets VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) requirements for floor coatings, a “Low Emitting Materials” credit may be attained.
Stonhard is a member of the US Green Building Council and is committed to developing sustainable resinous flooring and wall system solutions. More than 90% of new product development and reformulation efforts are geared to water-based urethanes or 100% solid epoxy-based chemistry. This effort not only provides safer floor and coating products to both industrial and commercial markets, it also reduces hazardous waste and can help your project qualify for LEED credits and certification.
Most Stonhard products have low VOCs. Stonhard has flooring systems that use recycled glass in the troweled mortar system and a number of Stonhard’s cementitious, urethane mortars also contain what is known as rapidly renewable materials, which are components which can be harvested in cycles under 10 years.
Click here to learn more about Stonhard’s sustainable solutions on the Stonhard website.