Best Practices for Designing, Operating, and Owning Multi-Family Buildings

Multifamily buildings—commonly referred to as apartment buildings, flats, mixed-use buildings, apartment communities, rowhouses, townhouses, bedsits, condominiums, or lofts—have long been overlooked in the broader industry push for high-performance buildings. In recent years, indoor environmental quality, especially indoor air quality, has become a greater concern for multifamily buildings.

ASHRAE Design Guide for Low- to Mid-Rise Multifamily Residential Buildings brings together information from codes, standards, and other guidance to outline best practices to achieve high-performance multifamily residential buildings and improve energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality in the multi-family/residential sector.

This guide addresses both dwelling units and common spaces of multifamily buildings, and it focuses on new construction but touches on retrofits and renovations. Topics include the impetus behind designing and building sustainable multifamily buildings, the varying cultural and demographic factors that might influence building design, and the codes that regulate multifamily buildings as well as additional guidance for design teams. The book also includes access to sample design process forms in Microsoft® Excel® format that enable modification by individual users.

ASHRAE Design Guide for Low- to Mid-Rise Multifamily Residential Buildings provides practitioners with foundational guidance for improving the energy performance, indoor environmental quality, sustainability, and overall quality of low-rise and mid-rise multifamily projects. The recommendations in this guide may also be useful to building operators and owners seeking better energy performance and indoor environmental quality in their multifamily projects.