Green Building Discussion

 

Topic: New ASHRAE ventilation standard

Discussion Participants:

• Mike O'Brien asks for help with ASREA standard
• Bion Howard flames ASHRAE

All postings are the opinion of the writer, and BuildingGreen can take no responsibility for their accuracy or appropriateness.

Mike O'Brien asks for help with ASREA standard

From: Mike O'Brien
Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 1996 4:30 PM

Dave Saum's point is well taken--I hope everyone plans to send in comments on the revised ASHRAE ventilation standard, especially Section 9 on residential ventilation, by 12/12/96. Good ventilation would really promote better health and energy efficiency in houses, but it's not going to happen from the standard as drafted.

The draft standard simply takes the old code chestnut of an operable bathroom window or exhaust fan and ennobles it with standard-dom. There's no discussion of whole house ventilation at all, nor of the interactions between house pressures, combustion appliances and ventilation systems; no awareness of the diagnostic tools available to achieve proper ventilation and house pressures--I could go on, and I hope you will too.

More information is at: http://www.ASHRAE.org/

Mike O'Brien & Associates Environmental Building Consultants

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Bion Howard flames ASHRAE

From: Bion Howard
Sent: Thursday, December 12, 1996 7:37 PM

----------------------------------------------------------------- Accidental Ventilation -- Sucks! (Bion Howard, at an EEBA meeting about 10 years ago) -----------------------------------------------------------------

??? Anyway, every time I checkout a "problem house" (moisture, odor, etc.) guess what one of the key things is that I encounter about 80% of the time?

Right -- bathrooms with no point-vent fans and "operable" windows that are often painted, rotted, or nailed shut. The old chestnut needs desperately to be taken out of the fire (they often explode, don't they...) and handed piping hot back to the NAHB code staff, the Larry Speilvogel's, and the other "first costs at any cost" crew members, who forget the:

[[[ You can pay me now, or you can pay me later ]]] oil-filter commercial.

Now I know you just adore dealing with moisture related call-backs Mr.& Ms builder don't you? If for no other reason than avoiding physical deterioration of building structure, I firmly believe there should be at least 50-cfm delivered (NOT rated) to every bathroom, with a timer to allow the fan to run and then shut down without further human intervention, using a low-Sone fan (perhaps a better argument than "should there be a fan" is "how quiet should the fan be to really ensure people will __turn it on___ in the first place...")

Here is a perfect example of ASHRAE in underdrive. Standard 90.2-1993P committee wound up having to develop its own residential ventilation criteria due to Std.62 problems, and nothing has changed. ASHRAE committees seem to have a real serious intramural communication problem, and if the builders for example can't win in one venue, they try somewhere else (...take it from me, since I served on the NAHB technical staff, this is not far fetched at all...)

So, why is this such a big deal? Because a window is likely to be there anyway and putting in a low-Sone fan, proper ductwork, and a timer control might add about $200 per Bathroom (less in production building due to economies of scale). Mr. Bion D. Howard, Principal

Building Environmental Science & Technology P. O. Box 1007 Upper Marlboro, Maryland 20773 USA V:(301)627-2780 FAX:(301)627-4735