
“Hudson River Waterfront” | Colin Campbell Cooper (1913)

With about one hundred technical committees administered by accredited standards developers globally, the stream of standards action in the building energy conservation space is one of the fastest-moving; and a space that demonstrates remarkable adaption. As the largest non-residential building construction market in the United States the education facility industry is on the receiving end of prescriptive and performance requirements produced by these technical committees that are enforced by state agencies and/or sustainability consortia.
Now comes three more candidate revisions to another fast-moving standard — ASHRAE/ICC/USGBC/IES Standard 189.1 Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings — co-developed (and significantly re-branded recently) by four different organizations that are accessible at the link below:
Public Review Draft Standards / Online Comment Database
To paraphrase the issues in play:
Addendum b: This ISC would limit the use of the “Section 7.4.1.1.2, Alternate Renewables Approach: Reduced On-Site Renewable Energy Systems and Higher-Efficiency Equipment” to building projects that are less than 25,000 square feet. This threshold is the same as that for the simplified mechanical system approach for compliance with ASHRAE 90.1, which is also 25,000 square feet. Larger buildings will be able to comply with the standard by either complying prescriptively to the onsite renewables requirements in Section 7.4.1.1.1 or calculating trade-offs between energy efficiency and on site renewables by using the performance approach in Section 7.5.
Comments are due March 3rd.
Addendum bm: This adds the option under the energy performance path in Standard 189.1 of modeling district energy systems that are not wholly contained within the project site boundary. This independent substantive change to the addendum makes changes to the language intended to improve clarity and correct some errors contained in the 2nd public review ISC version.
Comments are due March 18th.
We welcome real-time discussion on these and other energy conservation proposals any day at 11 AM Eastern time. Our next Mechanical Engineering monthly teleconference is indicated on our CALENDAR. Use the login credentials at the upper right of our homepage.

Issue: [Various]
Category: Mechanical, Electrical, Energy, Facility Asset Management, US Department of Energy
Colleagues: Eric Albert, Richard Robben, Larry Spielvogel
Standards Georgia

Yale University Art Museum
Posted December 26, 2018
With about one hundred technical committees administered by accredited standards developers globally, the stream of standards action in the building energy conservation space is one of the fastest-moving; and a space that demonstrates remarkable adaption. As the largest non-residential building construction market in the United States the education facility industry is on the receiving end of prescriptive and performance requirements produced by these technical committees that are enforced by state agencies and/or sustainability consortia.
Now comes three more candidate revisions to another fast-moving standard — ASHRAE/ICC/USGBC/IES Standard 189.1 Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings — co-developed (and significantly re-branded recently) by four different organizations that are accessible at the link below:
Public Review Draft Standards / Online Comment Database
To paraphrase some of the issues in play:
Addendum a: The first public review draft added Climate Zones 4A and 4B to those required to meet heat island mitigation criteria in Section 5.3.5.3 for roofs. In response to the first public review, two additional exceptions were added.
Addendum m: This addendum adds new provisions to enable right-sized tubing for efficient delivery of water through hot water distribution systems. The new requirement balances health, energy and plumbing code intents with energy and water efficiency strategies. The addendum is based in part on research by the California Energy Commission on the energy implications of hot water supply. The volume of water in a pipe is the primary determinant of how long a user must wait for hot water to be delivered at a fixture. This has significant implications for both energy use to heat the water and the volume of water wasted before delivery. Similar provisions are currently included in the IECC and the IgCC.
[Comment: This addendum for “right-sized” piping resembles proposals we have made in previous revisions of ASHRAE 90.1; though there are counter-arguments that involve Legionella mitigation]
Addendum n: This addendum clarifies the indoor environmental quality requirements for composite wood and related materials, by adding the recent USEPA’s regulation on composite wood products, requiring that products be certified as meeting the requirements of CARB or USEPA as being manufactured either with ultra-lowemitting formaldehyde resins or no added formaldehyde resins and updating the language on lab certification to make it consistent with the language already in the 189.1-2017 for the other building material categories in Section 8.4.2.
Comments are due January 20th.
We welcome real-time discussion on these and other energy conservation proposals any day at 11 AM Eastern time. Our next Mechanical Engineering monthly teleconference is scheduled for February 19th, 11 AM. Use the login credentials at the upper right of our homepage.

St. Norbert College
Issue: [Various]
Category: Mechanical, Electrical, Energy, Facility Asset Management, US Department of Energy
Colleagues: Eric Albert, Richard Robben, Larry Spielvogel
Standards Georgia
Posted October 8, 2018

“New York from Brooklyn” | Colin Campbell Cooper (1910)
With about one hundred technical committees administered by accredited standards developers globally, the stream of standards action in the building energy conservation space is one of the fastest-moving. As the largest non-residential building construction market in the United States the education facility industry is on the receiving end of prescriptive and performance requirements produced by these technical committees that are enforced by state agencies or sustainability consortia.
At the moment, the four-partner collaboration of the American Society of Heating and Refrigeration Engineers (ASHRAE), the International Code Council (ICC). the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) and the Illumination Engineering Society (IES) opens the proposals of its technical committees to public review in 30 to 90 day intervals according to ANSI’s Continuous Maintenance process. Keep in mind that ANSI/ASHRAE/USGBC/IES/ICC Standard 189.1-2017 Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings is not necessarily a safety document but it deserves our attention because it is referenced into ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2016 — Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings which is incorporated by reference into many local, state and national energy conservation laws.

Little Big Horn College
Now comes two more candidate revisions that are accessible at the link below:
Public Review Draft Standards / Online Comment Database
Note that Addendum j and Addendum k are the First Public Review of candidate changes that are significant renewable energy concepts.
Comments are due October 22nd.
We welcome real-time discussion on these and other energy conservation proposals any day at 11 AM Eastern time. Our next Mechanical Engineering monthly teleconference is scheduled for November 19th, 11 AM. Even though the deadline for commenting on the proposals listed here will have passed, there is another batch of addenda open for public comment right behind it which we will identify in separate posts.
Use the login credentials at the upper right of our homepage.

Issue: [Various]
Category: Mechanical, Electrical, Energy, Facility Asset Management, US Department of Energy
Colleagues: Eric Albert, Richard Robben, Larry Spielvogel
Posted August 1, 2018

Grand Valley State University
ASHRAE is an ANSI-accredited continuous-maintenance standards developer (a significant tributary in what we call the regulatory product development “stream”). Technical committees developing continuous maintenance regulatory products release public review documents in 30-to-90 day intervals. The technical committee writing ASHRAE 189.1 Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings has released the following redlines for public review:
Addendum f
This addendum replaces the current definition of “construction documents,” which references Standard 90.1, with a definition that is consistent with the 2015 International Green Construction Code. The Standard 90.1 definition does not address building sites or land development which are included in the scope of Standard 189.1.
Addendum g
This addendum replaces the current defined term of “design professional” from Standard 90.1 with “registered design professional,” which is consistent with the terms used in the 2015 International Green Construction Code. Standard 189.1 addresses subject matter for which the traditional titles of architect and engineer, used in the Standard 90.1 definition) do not necessarily align with typical requirements of authorities having jurisdiction. For example, it is common for jurisdictions to have tiered requirements for designer qualifications, often permitting licensed master tradespeople to design certain projects within their respective discipline. The proposed definition also better accommodates specialty design categories such as onsite wastewater system designer, irrigation system designer, landscape designer and soil scientist.
Addendum h
This addendum clarifies that it is the alternate on-site sources of water or municipally reclaimed water are not required to be “acceptable” because it is given that anything not disallowed by an AHJ is acceptable.
All addenda may be found in their entirety at the link below:
ASHRAE Online Standards Actions & Public Review Drafts
Comments are due August 8th.
Technical committees developing ASHRAE codes and standards typically meet face-to-face twice a year at ASHRAE Conferences; the next one in Atlanta, Georgia January 14-16 2019. We encourage education facility professionals in within driving distance of this conference to attend the ASHRAE technical standards meetings. Ahead of these conferences we will also host a dedicated markup session for mechanical engineering standards on July 24th, 11:00 AM during which time we will examine and markup documents released for public review by ASHRAE, ASME, AWWA, IAMPO and other organizations developing documents that determine #TotalCostofOwnership of education facilities.

Issue: [Various], ASHRAE
Category: Mechanical, Electrical, Energy, Facility Asset Management, US Department of Energy
Colleagues: Richard Robben, Larry Spielvogel
Link to ANSI Announcement: ANSI Standards Action (PDF Pages 42-24).

Somerset Community College