Atlanta, Georgia, United States, 6 May 2018: ASHRAE seeks a second round of public comments on proposed revisions to ‘BSR/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.2-2007R – Energy-Efficient Design of Low-Rise Residential Buildings’ the organisation said in a Press communiqué. The standard is open for a 45-day public review, until June 18, 2018, the communiqué said. Those interested in reviewing and commenting can do so at: www.ashrae.org/technical-resources/standards-and-guidelines/standards-actions, the communiqué further said.

According to ASHRAE, the purpose of Standard 90.2-2007R is to provide minimum energy-efficiency requirements for the design and construction of residential buildings. The proposed revision of ASHRAE Standard 90.2 presents a completely new approach to delivered residential building energy performance than the 2007 edition of the standard, the communiqué said. This revision to the standard seeks to deliver residential building energy performance that is at least 50% more efficient than the energy efficiency defined by the 2006 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), which serves as the industry benchmark, the communiqué further said.

Theresa Weston, Chair of the Standard 90.2 committee, said: “The key to accomplishing residential building energy performance is in the delivery of an accurate, flexible, performance-based standard to enable user creativity in meeting the performance objectives. More importantly, this Standard provides a mechanism by which any residential building design can be easily evaluated against these performance objectives. By establishing a clearly‐defined rules set for energy-performance modelling, users such as home builders, can easily assess various designs, material options, orientations and other variables to evaluate predicted energy performance.”

According to ASHRAE, this second round of public review presents proposed independent substantive changes to the previous public review draft completed in December 2016. The standard focuses on “performance” as the primary objective and also includes some system-level minimum prescriptive provisions of performance, the communiqué said. These minimum provisions are provided to ensure compliance and to protect against analytical gaming, the communiqué further said.

The Standard 90.2 committee will begin reviewing comments at the 2018 ASHRAE Annual Conference in Houston on June 25 and 26, 2018, the communiqué said. Interested parties are welcome to observe, the communiqué further said.

To make a comment or to learn more, visit: www.ashrae.org/publicreviews.