December Chapter Meeting Recording

The Feasibility of Natural Ventilation

This session described process of early phase analysis that a design team can to test whether natural ventilation is a feasible comfort-conditioning system for a given climate and building configuration.  The speaker will build on her “Natural Ventilation Top 10 Feasibility Questions” from an ASHRAE Journal article to cover compliance with ASHRAE Standards 55 and 62.1 and a discussion of the impact of climate change.

Erin McConahey is a Principal in Mechanical Engineering with Arup, an employee-owned global engineering, advisory and planning consulting firm. During her 27 years with Arup, she has worked internationally and now leads multidisciplinary design teams in Los Angeles on a wide variety of project types.  She currently leads Arup’s global Net Zero Carbon Building initiative.

Erin’s passion for finding integrated design solutions through a collaborative design process began with a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Master’s degree in Structural Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.  Erin is a Professional Engineer in California and Colorado, a LEED accredited professional (BD+C specialty), an ASHRAE accredited High Performance Building Design Professional, and a Fellow of the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-conditioning Engineers.  She is co-author of the ASHRAE Natural Ventilation Design Guide and writes semi-annually for the Engineer’s Notebook column in ASHRAE Journal about the transition to a carbon economy.