ASHRAE Revises Residential Energy Standard ATLANTA - American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers Inc. (ASHRAE) new 2007 residential energy efficiency standard contains several changes made based on public input. ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 90.2-2007, “Energy-Efficient Design of Low-Rise Residential Buildings, provides minimum requirements for the energy-efficient design of residential buildings.”

Responses to public input allowed improvements to the following provisions of the standard:

• Simplification of the cool roof provisions, by removing the equation and table and substituting with a simple table to determine compliance.
• Further simplification of the envelope tables regarding the categories on walls, below grade insulation requirements, and the fenestration requirements by either combining near like categories into single categories or enhancing the energy values.
• A clearer definition of “conditioned space,” that will help in assessing.
• Enhancement of the “mass walls” provisions to make clearer the recognition of this type of system and its benefits to energy conservation.
• Enhancement to the climate tables with the intent to make the document more acceptable and responsive to the needs of countries outside the United States and Canada. In this case, added were climate data for China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Mexico.

The cost of ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 90.2-2004 is $95 ($76 for ASHRAE members). To order, contact ASHRAE Customer Service at 800-527-4723 or visit the Bookstore at www.ashrae.org.