ASHRAE Manuals Geared to Sustainable Design

A new user’s manual provides users with a better understanding of the design, installation and operation requirements in ASHRAE’s ventilation standard.

The Standard 62.1 User’s Manual explains the requirements of ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 62.1-2004, “Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality,” and contains numerous examples of their application in an easy-to-follow question and answer format.

“Because the standard is written in code-intended language, such material could not be included in the standard itself, so the manual helps users better understand the intent and apply it to their work,” Dennis Stanke, chair of the Standard 62.1 committee, said. “It helps users understand what Standard 62.1 requires and how those requirements can be met. It’s a document that designers have needed for many years and will find useful for many years to come.”

In other design news from ASHRAE, a guide written to make sustainable design easier has earned a leadership award from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small Office Buildings is a recipient of a USGBC 2005 Leadership Award, which recognizes outstanding individuals and organizations that signify vision, leadership and commitment to the evolution of green building design and construction.

The award is the second for the book, which earlier this year was recognized by the Alliance to Save Energy as part of its annual Stars of Energy Efficiency Awards program. The Alliance recognized ASHRAE for its “exemplary illustration of and commitment to energy-efficient policy and practice.”

Designers can now earn credit under Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for use of the Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small Office Buildings. The inclusion of the design guide will help designers achieve LEED certification, offered by the U.S. Green Building Council.

“The small office design guide clearly meets the overall goal of LEED in that it accelerates the development and implementation of green building practices,” Lee Burgett, P.E., ASHRAE president, said. “The design guide series is intended to provide prescriptive guidance to bring us 30% closer to a net zero-energy building, meaning those that use equal or less energy than they produce on an annual basis. Our goal is to provide the technical resources needed to assist the HVAC industry in creating the most sustainable buildings possible.”

Specifically, the design guide has been added in LEED-NC 2.1 and the upcoming LEED-NC 2.2 as a prescriptive compliance path to achieve LEED-NC Energy and Atmosphere Credit 1, Optimize Energy Performance (EAc1), credit.

LEED-NC EAc1 is intended to reduce environmental impacts associated with excessive energy use by awarding LEED credit to buildings that achieve increasing levels of energy performance above ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-1999.

The guide establishes a previously unavailable prescriptive compliance path and enables small office design teams to earn LEED-NC EAc1 points without incurring the costs associated with whole building energy simulation. Small office buildings that successfully demonstrate compliance with the guide will be awarded 4 LEED EAc1 points.

For more information go to www.ashrae.org .

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