The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), Atlanta, has published a new guideline for increasing energy efficiency in historic buildings while minimizing the disturbance of the building’s historic character and significantly historic characteristics and materials.
ASHRAE Guideline 34-2019, “Energy Guideline for Historic Buildings,” provides descriptions of the processes and procedures for retrofitting historic buildings to achieve greater measured efficiency. The guideline is particularly aimed at providing guidance for ‘listed’ historic buildings; i.e., those formally designated or eligible to be designated as historically significant by a governing body.
Guideline 34 provides a step-by-step procedure for sensitive energy upgrading, beginning with forming the project team and gathering building and energy use histories, to instituting energy efficiency measures (EEM). Building envelope improvements, environmental control strategies, energy system analysis, HVAC selection and lighting design considerations are all addressed in the guideline. All recommendations are made in consideration of preserving the integrity of the historically valuable building character, materials and associated artifacts.
"The committee members writing this guideline are exceptionally knowledgeable about the special issues related to historic buildings and the care needed to preserve them,” said Sheila Hayter, ASHRAE’s 2018-2019 president, who also served as chair of the international guideline committee. “The committee’s intent was to provide guidance for worldwide communities and specifically for entire project teams—not just engineers.”
