Requirements regarding operations and maintenance in institutional and commercial buildings are among changes to ASHRAE’s newly published indoor air quality standard. ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 62.1-2016, Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality, sets minimum ventilation rates and other requirements for these buildings.
Designers and users of the standards who are involved with those spaces or processes will benefit from using the up-to-date requirements,” says Hoy Bohanon, chair of the Standard 62.1 committee. Among the major changes are these:
• Revision of the definition of “environmental tobacco smoke” (ETS) to include emissions from electronic smoking devices and from smoking of cannabis
• Revision of operations and maintenance requirements to more closely align with the requirements in ASHRAE/ACCA Standard 180-2012, Standard Practice for Inspection and Maintenance of Commercial-Building HVAC Systems
• Addition of requirements to the Indoor Air Quality Procedure for determining minimum ventilation rates by including consideration of the combined effects of multiple contaminants of concern on individual organ systems
• Assignment of laboratory exhaust to a default of Air Class 4, with an explicit allowance for a responsible environmental health and safety professional to determine that a lower air class is appropriate for particular systems
• Reduction of ventilation allowed to zero through the use of occupancy sensors — not through contaminant or carbon dioxide measurements — for spaces of selected occupancy types, provided that ventilation is restored to Vbz whenever occupancy is detected
• Changes of language related to demand control ventilation confirming that the standard is intended to be used for physical operation in addition to calculations for code review.
For information on ordering the standard, visit www.ashrae.org/bookstore.
This Quick Read was submitted by Dan Hounsell, editor-in-chief of Facility Maintenance Decisions, dan.hounsell@tradepressmedia.com. Read more about common causes of IAQ problems at https://www.facilitiesnet.com/11806FMD.
