ASHRAE Publishes User’s Manual for Standard 62.2

ATLANTA – A new book from ASHRAE will aid users in designing and constructing homes and apartments that comply with its residential ventilation and indoor air quality standard.

The User’s Manual is the first for ASHRAE Standard 62.2-2004, Ventilation and Acceptable Indoor Air Quality in Low-Rise Residential Buildings, which provides the minimum requirements necessary to achieve acceptable indoor air quality for dwellings.

The manual was co-developed by the Indoor Air Quality Association.

"The 62.2 User’s Manual will provide HVAC engineers and IAQ consultants with practical information to ensure that ventilation positively affects the indoor environment," Robert G. Baker, IAQA president and ASHRAE Member, said. "IAQA was pleased to be a co-sponsor of this dynamic publication."

The manual explains how to comply with all the requirements of the standard, provides examples illustrating specific methods of complying with sections of the standard, and includes background material explaining why many of the requirements of the standard exist, according to Roger Hedrick, who co-authored the book.

The manual is targeted toward builders and subcontractors, but will also be useful for code officials, researchers, and interested homeowners.

"The manual has been developed as a document that will accompany Standard 62.2 and provide guidance for applying its requirements to the design and construction of residential buildings," David Grimsrud, chair of the Standard 62.2 committee, said. "It serves as a guide to clarifying issues for users."

The cost of the 62.2 User’s Manual is $45 ($36, ASHRAE members).

To order, contact ASHRAE Customer Service at 1-800-527-4723 (United States and Canada) or 404-636-8400 (worldwide), fax 404-321-5478, by mail at 1791 Tullie Circle NE, Atlanta, GA 30329, or visit the ASHRAE.org Bookstore at www.ashrae.org.

ASHRAE, founded in 1894, is an international organization of 55,000 persons. ASHRAE fulfills its mission of advancing heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration to serve humanity and promote a sustainable world through research, standards writing, publishing and continuing education.

IAQA, founded in 1998, is an international organization of 5,200 members. IAQA is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary organization, dedicated to promoting the exchange of indoor environmental information, through education and research, for the safety and well being of the general public. For more information, visit www.iaqa.org.

Become Part of the Green Team: New Guidance from ASHRAE

ATLANTA – Looking to become a more effective player on the green team?

ASHRAE GreenGuide: The Design, Construction and Operation of Sustainable Buildings will help teach designers how to participate effectively on design teams charged with producing green buildings.

"This is a design guide for mechanical engineers who are interested in advancing integrated, high performance/green concepts and applications on building design projects," said Malcolm Lewis, Ph.D., a member of ASHRAE’s technical committee on building environmental impacts and sustainability, which wrote the book. "The guidance will help building professionals analyze system design options and point them in the right direction for deeper analysis."

The book, an update to the 2003 version of ASHRAE GreenGuide, contains a new chapter outlining guidance on the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED™) Rating System developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. The chapter discusses ways in which LEED credits affect engineers and how they can best respond to the opportunities presented by the use of LEED on projects.

"The GreenGuide will assist the design and development team in striving for a level of accountability as to the effectiveness of their efforts to produce a building that is truly green," Lewis said.

The book also contains a new chapter on how HVAC&R systems interact with the local environment and methods for mitigating or reducing that impact.

"There are some areas that are either not intuitively obvious as being potential impacts of HVAC systems or are items that some may not consider to be truly sustainable issues," Lewis notes.

The ASHRAE GreenGuide also contains more than 40 GreenTips, which are sidebars containing information on techniques, processes, measures or systems. The tips contain a list of other sources for reference. To read the GreenTips, visit www.engineeringforsustainability.org.

This is the first in a new series of books, known as The ASHRAE Professional Series, published in cooperation with Butterworth-Heinemann/Elsevier. The series is intended to provide high-quality professional information for a global audience of HVAC&R engineers as well as professionals in related fields.

The cost of the ASHRAE GreenGuide is $79.95 ($62.95, ASHRAE members).

To order, contact ASHRAE Customer Service at 1-800-527-4723 (United States and Canada) or 404-636-8400 (worldwide), fax 404-321-5478, by mail at 1791 Tullie Circle NE, Atlanta, GA 30329, or visit the ASHRAE.org Bookstore at www.ashrae.org.

ASHRAE, founded in 1894, is an international organization of 55,000 persons. ASHRAE fulfills its mission of advancing heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration to serve humanity and promote a sustainable world through research, standards writing, publishing and continuing education.

Learn to Meet, Beat 90.1 Requirements with new eLearning Course

ATLANTA – Guidance to help users design buildings that are in compliance with ASHRAE’s energy efficient standard is available through a new online learning course.

The Fundamentals of Standard 90.1 is the newest offering in ASHRAE’s eLearning system, which provides on-demand, interactive online courses that include hardbound and online course reference books, online self-assessment and continuing education credits.

ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA 90.1-2004, Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings, has become the basis for building codes, and the standard for building design and construction throughout the United States.

"The new eLearning course is designed to help you go through the standard and learn about each of the requirements," said Carol Marriott, P.Eng., a former member of the Standard 90.1 committee who helped develop the new module. "In school, you had assignments to enforce retention of the concepts you learned. The eLearning course is designed exactly the same way, in that it reinforces learning by providing questions to practice the concepts learned, and applying the 90.1 requirements to sample questions. Most users will hardly even realize they are learning as it is designed for users to have fun while doing the work."

The course explains:

• The detailed requirements of the standard so that they can be applied in designing buildings that are in compliance with 90.1;

• How to use available resource material, such as the standard and the User’s Manual, to design and construct building in compliance with the standard;

• How to complete compliance documentation in a satisfactory manner the first time; and

• How to translate the key principles of the standard to local and state adaptations.

For more information about ASHRAE eLearning Systems, visit www.ashrae-elearning.org.

DOE Sets Deadlines for Appliance Efficiency Standards

In response to a law suit filed by environmental groups, consumer groups, New York City, and several states, the Department of Energy (DOE) has agreed to set new efficiency standards for nearly two dozen commercial and residential appliances within five-years. Under the settlement, DOE will issue final rules establishing new efficiency standards for 17 product categories between 2007 and 2011.

The initial suit charged that DOE lagged behind in upgrading energy efficiency standards for a variety of products such as heating and air-conditioning units, water heaters, dishwashers and clothes dryers.

In the 1980s, Congress directed DOE to periodically evaluate and strengthen efficiency standards for a wide variety of appliances. The lawsuit claimed that the Bush administration missed deadlines for new efficiency standards, and that for some appliances’ revised standards were 13 years overdue.

The first deadline for DOE is February 2007, when rules for packaged boilers must be finalized. Air conditioners, heat pumps and clothes dryers are among the appliances expected to see revised efficiency standards by June 30, 2011.

Plaintiffs in the suit were the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Massachusetts Union of Public Housing Tenants, the Texas Ratepayers'

Organization to Save Energy, the city of New York, and the states of California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

According to plaintiffs, the new efficiency standards could save enough energy to meet the needs of as many as 12 million American households. By reducing demand for electricity, plaintiffs say the standards also will reduce global emissions of carbon dioxide by as much as 103 million metric tons per year.

The Gas Appliance Manufacturers Association (GAMA) along with the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute (ARI) intervened in the case on behalf of the plaintiff groups. The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers received intervenor status on the side of DOE.

ASHRAE Staff Visits White House to Discuss High Performance Buildings

Staff of ASHRAE’s Washington office met with Kevin Hurst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on November 15, 2006. The discussion focused on OSTP’s current activities relative to high performance and energy-efficient buildings, and opportunities for ASHRAE and members of the building community to provide input.

Through the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT), OSTP was charged with establishing an interagency group to develop, in coordination with an advisory committee, a National Building Performance Initiative to integrate federal, state, and voluntary private sector efforts to reduce the costs of construction, operation, maintenance, and renovation of commercial, industrial, institutional, and residential buildings.

OSTP has begun discussions with necessary federal agencies for participation in such a group. ASHRAE, as a leader in the built environment and convener of the High Performance Building and Energy Efficiency Roundtable, has volunteered to assist OSTP in garnering input and participation from the private sector.

Reports on ASHRAE’s continued involvement will be included in upcoming Government Affairs Updates.

Washington D.C. City Council May Require Green Buildings

The D.C. City Council is expected to approve a bill designed to require new buildings to incorporate energy-saving measures. All 13 council members voted in favor of the measure in a preliminary vote. The legislation will use standards established by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to define a green building as one that is designed and built in a way that helps to alleviate the "environmental, economic and social impacts" of a building so that it is "energy efficient, sustainable, safe, and cost-effective."

If adopted, the measure would make the city the largest one in the country that enforces green building standards for private developers. By 2009, any building receiving more than 20 percent public financing, including all city-owned projects including schools, would have to meet the standards. By 2012, every new commercial building over 50,000 square feet would have to meet the guidelines.

Report: Energy Consumption Growth can be Curbed with Existing Technology

According to a McKinsey Global Institute report, existing technology such as compact fluorescent light bulbs and improved insulation on new buildings can cut the growth of worldwide energy consumption by more than half over the next 15 years.

The report concludes that if households and industry make more aggressive efforts to improve energy-efficiency over the next 15 years, then the yearly growth rate in worldwide energy demand through 2020 will be reduced to six-tenths of a percent from a forecasted annual rate of 2.2 percent.

Steps that can be taken include reduced standby power requirements, appliance efficiency standards and the use of solar water heaters.

In order for the steps to be successful, consumers will have to increase the amount of value they place on energy efficiency products, changing buying habits and thus forcing the market to change with them, the report said.

View the report at

http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/reports/pdfs/global_energy_demand/global_energy.pdf

(free registration required).

ASHRAE Leadership Visits Agencies, Organizations

On November 29 and 30, ASHRAE President Terry Townsend, President-Elect Kent Peterson, and Executive Vice President Jeff Littleton met with representatives from several federal agencies and organizations interested in the built environment. These high-level meetings provided an excellent opportunity for ASHRAE leadership to share information on numerous ASHRAE projects and explore opportunities for collaboration and partnership.

Programs and projects resulting from these meetings will be announced as they develop.

Organizations visited include:

• American Institute of Architects
• Alliance to Save Energy
• Natural Resources Defense Council
• American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy
• Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
• American Gas Association
• U.S. Green Building Council
• Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Star
• General Services Administration, Public Buildings Service