The webinar will focus on key challenges in multifamily ventilation and strategies to address these challenges. Presenters and specific topics include:
• Sean Maxwell, Consortium for Advanced Residential Buildings, will discuss make-up air strategies in new construction multifamily buildings. In these buildings, exhaust-only ventilation strategies are still common as a means of meeting both local exhaust and whole-unit ventilation rates required by ASHRAE 62.2-2010. Although the exhaust flows can be easily measured to show compliance, the source and adequacy of the make-up air is unknown. In attached multifamily housing, with focus on air-sealing the exterior walls to reduce infiltration, “make-up” air could be from adjacent apartments rather than the outdoors. Therefore, some building designers and program administrators are moving toward strategies that intentionally provide outdoor air. In exhaust only strategies, passive vents are a make-up air strategy with lower operating costs and lower first costs than mechanical supply ventilation systems. The presentation will discuss the evaluation of the performance of this strategy in three buildings and design guidance to improve the performance of this strategy.
• Joe Lstiburek, Building Science Corporation, will discuss the impossibility of meeting ASHRAE Standard 62.2-2013 ventilation requirements in multifamily buildings that are also constructed to LEED compartmentalization requirements or the currently proposed ASHRAE Standard 62.2-2014 (out for public review) compartmentalization requirements unless balanced ventilation approaches are used. Joe will present various balanced ventilation options that meet the ventilation requirements and various air sealing compartmentalization options that meet the current and proposed compartmentalization requirements