ASHRAE Standard 170-2021 Ventilation of Health Care Facilities
ASHRAE Standard 170-2021 Ventilation of Health Care Facilities includes significant improvements to the 2017 edition. Most notably, the 2021 edition incorporates content in support of the new frame-work introduced in 2017, which divided the standard into three distinct sections: hospital spaces, outpatient spaces, and nursing home spaces. The added content facilitates closer coor-dination between the standard and the Facility Guidelines Institute (FGI) documents, which, as of 2018, comprise three separate books:
- Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospitals
- The Guidelines for Design and Construction of Outpatient Facilities
- Guidelines for Design and Construction of Residential Health, Care, and Support Facilities
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ASHRAE Standard 170-2021 Updates
As a continuous maintenance document, Standard 170 publishes addenda continually and updates on a four-year cycle in alignment with the FGI documents. Improvements to the 2021 edition include the following:
- Revised scope, with improved guidance on thermal comfort conditions provided
![ASHRAE Standard 170-2021 Ventilation of Health Care Facilities]()
- Extensive modifications to address the Outpatient and Residential sections
- Addition of a new outpatient ventilation table to address nonacute-type spaces
- Extensive revisions to air filtration requirements
- Addition of new columns in the ventilation tables to prescribe filtration requirement and designate unoccupied turndown
- Expanded guidance on separation distance requirements for varied intake and exhaust arrangements, coordinating with related ASHRAE Standard 62.1 data
- Expanded requirements to allow airborne infectious isolation room exhaust discharge to general exhaust under certain conditions
- Improved guidance on space ventilation requirements needed for anesthetic gas use
- Clarification of Class 1/Class 2/Class 3 imaging in coordination with FGI
- Revised definition of “invasive procedure”
- Improved guidance related to behavioral and mental health
The committee appreciates the hard work invested in this edition by everyone who partici-pated. We are grateful for the partnership with FGI and other ASHRAE committees. The com-mittee also appreciates the feedback received from the public review and continuous maintenance proposal processes. Future input from the public is always welcome.
This standard does not constitute a design guide. Rather it comprises a set of minimum requirements intended for adoption by code-enforcing agencies. For wide-ranging guidance, we refer the user to ASHRAE Handbook—HVAC Applications, HVAC Design Manual for Hospitals and Clinics and the proposed ASHRAE Guideline 43, Operations Guideline for Ven-tilation of Health Care Facilities.
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