Buildings are for people but habiting means vapor release. The new chapter introduced by ASHRAE Technical Committee 1.12 looks to how large that release is in residential buildings, schools and natatoriums. It advances a method commonly used to evaluate the importance, offers examples of how the method is used and summarizes the consequences the unavoidable vapor release may have if the impact is not moderated.

Sooner or later, every building owner and HVAC designer comes up against a humidity or moisture problem that simply won’t go away. The members of ASHRAE Technical Committee 1.12 have gathered their experiences of diagnosing and fixing several of the most common moisture problems and summarized these in Chapter 62 of the 2015 ASHRAE Handbook: Applications. This presentation summarizes the hard-knock experiences of your colleagues. The information is practical, it’s simple and it’s real.

Epidemiological investigators have shown clear and consistent associations between occupancy of damp indoor spaces and increased probability of important adverse health effects. A Multidisciplinary Task Group (MTG) developed a simple and recognizable description of when building dampness is sufficient to increase the probability of negative health effects. It also suggests practical tools and techniques utilizing four quantitative metrics that can alert managers to the risk of an indoor space becoming “damp” enough to affect health in the future.