The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) has approved a change to its residential ventilation standard to encourage home retrofits to improve indoor air quality.
ASHRAE allows alternative methods for meeting the standard's requirements for kitchen and bathroom exhaust fans.
"With the U.S. economic stimulus having a great deal of focus on weatherization and other residential retrofits, we developed this change to help improve indoor air quality for public health and safety," according to Steven Emmerich, committee chair.
Addendum "e" to ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 62.2-2007, Ventilation and
Acceptable Indoor Air Quality in Low-Rise Residential Buildings, allows
alternative methods for meeting the standard's requirements regarding
kitchen and bathroom exhaust fans. The standard currently requires fans
in those rooms.
An example of an alternative compliance path that is allowed under the addendum would be increasing the overall whole-house ventilation rate to compensate for insufficient or non-existent bathroom exhaust.
While the alternative path could result in modest increased energy
use due to the extra whole-house ventilation required, Emmerich notes
that the proposal is being made because experience has shown that
people doing retrofits will often ignore the standard if the fan
requirements are too onerous.
Addendum "e" can be found at www.ashrae.org/62.2e.
