What is ASHRAE Guideline 36 and why is it important?

Are you a facility operator, energy manager, or part of the e facility management engineering or project management teams? If so, you’ve likely come across ASHRAE Guideline 36-2021, High-Performance Sequences of Operation for HVAC Systems. This guideline is the industry’s first attempt to standardize best-in-class building control sequences for energy savings and more efficient building control system specification, design, and implementation.

ASHRAE Guideline 36 provides a set of standardized advanced sequences of operation for common HVAC systems. These sequences are designed to maximize the energy efficiency and performance of HVAC systems, while also meeting ASHRAE occupant thermal comfort and ventilation standards, providing control stability, and allowing for simple real-time fault detection for air handling units. More importantly, with more and more building control system manufacturers adopting the guideline, control program “libraries,” or templates that comply with the guideline, are now available for control contractors to use in projects. This can greatly reduce the time and effort of building control software implementation while minimizing the programming errors. 

Learn More:

If you are looking for ways to improve the energy efficiency of your HVAC systems, we encourage you to listen in to this recorded webinar ASHRAE Guideline 36: High-Performance Sequences of Operation for HVAC Systems, where we focus on the  intent, benefits, and scope of ASHRAE Guideline 36, as well as the stakeholders involved in designing and implementing the guideline. The webinar also highlights the key control sequence concepts that have the greatest impact on energy savings in this guideline, including AHU static pressure resets through trim and respond method, dual-max controls for VAV terminal unit with reheat, and automated fault detection and diagnostics (AFDD) for air handling units. Finally, we discuss how to screen your buildings to see if they are a good candidate for a controls retrofit leveraging Guideline 36. Tune in today and learn from our expert presenters.