By Healthcare Facilities Today

ATLANTA — The newly updated Standard 169, Climatic Data for Building Design Standards, serves as a comprehensive source of climate data for those involved in building design, and provides a variety of climatic information for designing, planning and sizing building energy systems and equipment.

“Using the results from ASHRAE Research Project 1453 ‘Updating the ASHRAE Climatic Data for Design and Standards,’ the data and tables in the standard were completely replaced,” Dru Crawley, chair of the committee writing the standard, said.

An additional “Extremely Hot” Climate Zone 0 with humid (0A) and dry (0B) zones has been added, and the standard now includes climatic data for 5,564 locations throughout the world.

“With this major revision, Standard 169 now includes climate zone maps for the entire world, as opposed to the 2006 standard which only included a U.S. climate zone map,” Crawley said. “This allows users outside the U.S. to more easily determine which climate zone their location is in.”

The standard touches on dry-bulb, dew-point and wet-bulb temperatures; enthalpy; humidity ration; wind conditions; solar irradiation; latitude; longitude; and elevation for locations worldwide.

Standard 169 also includes statistical data, such as mean temperatures; daily ranges; degree hours; and seasonal percentages within ranges of temperatures, to name just a few.

The cost of ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 169, Climatic Data for Building Design Standards, is $72 ($61, ASHRAE members). To order, contact ASHRAE Customer Contact Center at 1-800-527-4723 (United States and Canada) or 404-636-8400 (worldwide), fax 678-539-2129, or visit www.ashrae.org/bookstore.

ASHRAE, founded in 1894, is a building technology society with more than 50,000 members worldwide. The Society and its members focus on building systems, energy efficiency, indoor air quality, refrigeration and sustainability. Through research, standards writing, publishing, certification and continuing education, ASHRAE shapes tomorrow’s built environment today.