Advancing Best Practices for Energy and Indoor Environmental Quality for Multifamily Buildings

Multifamily buildings represent a major opportunity to advance the goals of improved building energy performance and better indoor air quality. ACEEEestimates that there are $3.4Billion per year in cost effective energy savings in the multifamily sector. But the energy performance of multifamily buildingshas been relatively neglected in the broader industry push for high performance buildings, and many strategies for reducing energy use in this sector remainunder-represented in new construction. Likewise, indoor environmental quality – especially indoor air quality – and ventilation strategies from other buildingsectors have not always translated well to multifamily buildings even as IEQ concerns in the multifamily market have grown.In response to these needs and a booming multifamily market, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers(ASHRAE) launched a project to develop a new ASHRAE Multifamily Guide to begin to address this critical need for better information to supportbetter practice in the design and operation of multifamily buildings. Unlike ASHRAE’s Standards, this guide is not meant to provide minimumrequirements for multifamily buildings, but rather to provide best practices to maximize the quality, performance and effectiveness of existing practices whilesimultaneously enabling and empowering practitioners to pursue the best and highest performance options.This two-part paper will introduce readers to the ASHRAE Multifamily Guide and discuss the background behind its creation from the perspective ofboth the ASHRAE committee that oversaw its genesis and the team selected to create it. The first part will give the background for the project’s creationfrom the perspective of the Chair of ASHRAE’s Residential Building Committee. The second part will give the perspective of the project team and willdiscuss the subjects covered, how the content was structured to address the intended audience and how the more challenging subjects were handled.