Atlanta, Georgia: ASHRAE has announced publishing ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 62.2-2016, Ventilation and Acceptable Indoor Air Quality in Residential Buildings, which it says defines the roles of and minimum requirements for mechanical and natural ventilation systems and the building envelope intended to provide acceptable Indoor Air Quality in residential buildings.

The standard covers multifamily units in all types of buildings, and brings them under the scope of ASHRAE’s residential IAQ standard, marking one of the biggest changes to the recently published 2016 version, the announcement highlighted.

Prior to this edition, ASHRAE elaborated, multifamily residential buildings, four storeys or above, fell under the scope of ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 62.1, Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality. But now, said Paul Francisco, Chair of the Standard 62.2 committee, the dwelling units themselves are covered by 62.2, regardless of building height, providing consistency of ventilation requirements, while common areas of those buildings remain within the scope of 62.1.

According to ASHRAE, for new construction, this will result in a change of requirements for dwelling units in four storey and above buildings, while for the retrofit market, the change will result in coverage by ASHRAE ventilation standards for the first time in residential dwellings in four storey and above buildings. The 2016 standard also reportedly includes a method of claiming an infiltration credit for horizontally attached units.

Another major change in the standard, ASHRAE underlined, provides a means of determining equivalency for a variety of ventilation scheduling strategies, and added that this change also includes a maximum short-term exposure, to make sure that meeting annual equivalence does not unduly compromise short-term IAQ.

ASHRAE informed that the cost of Standard 62.2-2016, Ventilation and Acceptable Indoor Air Quality in Residential Buildings, is USD 54 for ASHRAE members and USD 64, non-members, and can be ordered at: www.ashrae.org/bookstore.