Requirements regarding multifamily residential dwellings, environmental tobacco smoke, and operations and maintenance 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 commercial and institutional buildings.

“The latest version of Standard 62.1 contains changes that affect high rise residential spaces, the indoor air quality procedure, laboratory exhaust and demand control ventilation,” Hoy Bohanon, chair of the Standard 62.1 committee, said. “Designers and users of the standards who are involved with those spaces or processes will benefit from using the up-to-date requirements.”

As with the 2016 version of Standard 62.2, Ventilation and Acceptable Indoor Air Quality in Residential Buildings, the scope of Standard 62.1 has changed. Multifamily residential dwelling spaces have been removed from the standard and now are covered under 62.2, according to Hoy Bohanon, chair of the Standard 62.1 committee. Spaces outside of the dwelling space such as corridors, lobbies, fitness rooms, retail, etc., remain covered by Standard 62.1.

Other major changes are:

  • 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 more information on this standard, click here.