ASHRAE Epidemic Task Force releases updated Building Readiness Guide

The ASHRAE Epidemic Task Force has updated its reopening guidance for HVAC systems to help mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus.

“The Building Readiness Guide includes additional information and clarifications to assist designers and commissioning providers in performing pre- or post-occupancy flush calculations to reduce the time and energy to clear spaces of contaminants between occupancy periods,” said Wade Conlan, ASHRAE Epidemic Task Force Building Readiness team lead, in a news release. “New information includes the theory behind the use of equivalent outdoor air supply, method for calculating the performance of filters and air cleaners in series, and filter droplet nuclei efficiency that help evaluate the systems’ ability to flush the building.”

There is now a link to a view-only Google Sheet that can be downloaded for use. This will help determine the available equivalent outdoor air changes and time to perform the flush.

The guide now also includes data to consider for heating of outdoor air and the potential impact on pre-heat coils in systems.

New York City has two very large buildings dedicated to answering the 911 calls of its five boroughs. With more than 11 million emergency calls annually, it makes perfect sense. The second of these buildings, the Public Safety Answering Center II (PSAC II) is located on a nine-acre parcel of land in the Bronx. It’s an imposing 450,000 square-foot structure—a 240-foot-wide by 240-foot-tall cube. The gleaming aluminum cube risesthe equivalent of 24 stories from behind a grassy berm, projecting the unlikely impression that it might actually be floating. Like most visually striking structures, the building has drawn as much scorn as it has admiration.