Regardless of the building, assuring an acceptable indoor air quality (IAQ) is a shared interest. In the home, ventilation and air quality contain unique considerations, as it is where your life resides, quite literally. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suggests three basic strategies to improve indoor air quality—source control, improved ventilation, and air cleaners.
In the same vein, ANSI/ASHRAE 62.2-2022: Ventilation And Acceptable Indoor Air Quality In Residential Buildings helps achieve acceptable IAQ in buildings via dwelling-unit ventilation (intended to dilute unavoidable contaminant emissions from people, materials, and background processes), local demand-controlled exhaust (intended to remove contaminants from kitchens and bathrooms), and source control.
What is ANSI/ASHRAE 62.2-2022?
This American National Standard defines the roles for mechanical and natural ventilation systems and the building envelope. Applying to dwelling units in residential occupancies in which the occupants are nontransient, ANSI/ASHRAE 62.2-2022 considers chemical, physical, and biological contaminants that can affect air quality. It also includes covers properties and performance of residential ventilation systems, such as sound and flow ratings for fans, controls, and labeling.
ANSI/ASHRAE 62.2-2022: Ventilation And Acceptable Indoor Air Quality In Residential Buildings is available on the ANSI Webstore.
Changes to ANSI/ASHRAE 62.2-2022
Revising the 2019 edition of the same American National Standard for ventilation and acceptable IAQ in residential buildings, ANSI/ASHRAE 62.2-2022 incorporates 10 addenda to ANSI/ASHRAE 62.2-2019. Its changes include:
- Improvements to organize and clarify existing provisions
- An increase in the stringency of compartmentalization requirements for attached dwelling units
- A requirement for supply or balanced dwelling-unit mechanical ventilation systems for attached dwelling units on enclosed corridors
Users can refer to Informative Appendix E of ANSI/ASHRAE 62.2-2022 for descriptions of all changes made to the standard.
Changes to ANSI/ASHRAE 62.2-2019
Revising the 2016 edition of the same American National Standard for ventilation and acceptable IAQ in residential buildings, ANSI/ASHRAE 62.2-2019 incorporates 16 addenda to ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 62.2-2016. Through its changes, ANSI/ASHRAE 62.2-2019:
- Added a compliance path giving credit for particle filtration
- Distinguished between balanced and unbalanced ventilation system interactions with natural infiltration
- Called for compartmentalization limits for new multifamily dwellings
- Allowed single-point envelope leakage test results when calculating infiltration credit
ANSI/ASHRAE 62.1-2022 and Related Standards for Indoor Air Quality
For further information on residential ventilation and IAQ beyond ANSI/ASHRAE 62.2-2022, users may want to consult its companion guideline, ASHRAE Guideline 24-2015: Ventilation And Indoor Air Quality In Low-Rise Residential Buildings, which, provides explanatory and educational material and was also developed by the ASHRAE Standing Standard Project Committee 62.2.
Some exclusions to ANSI/ASHRAE 62.2-2022 are specified in other American National Standards. Since the standard is intended to provide IAQ in residential buildings, users should refer to ANSI/ASHRAE 62.1-2022: Ventilation For Acceptable Indoor Air Quality for minimum ventilation rates and other measures for spaces intended for human occupancy within other buildings.
Both standards are available together as the ANSI/ASHRAE 62 – Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality Set.
You can learn more about this other standard in our post ANSI/ASHRAE 62.1-2022: Ventilation for Indoor Air Quality.
ANSI/ASHRAE 62.2-2022 also does not deal with thermal comfort conditions. Information pertinent to this area can be found in ANSI/ASHRAE 55-2020: Thermal Environmental Conditions For Human Occupancy.
