The ASHRAE GreenGuide: The Design, Construction and Operation of Sustainable Buildings is intended to 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," says Malcolm Lewis, 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 says.
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.
The cost of the GreenGuide is $79.95 ($62.95, ASHRAE members).
