Storage Locker Ventilation

[WinniPEng]

Hello, I'm wondering if anyone can help me out by providing their interpretation of the ASHRAE requirement for minimum ventilation for a building consisting of several hundred storage lockers, which are accessed from interior corridors (just like what you'd see on "Storage Wars"). The locker sizes range from 25 sq. ft. to 200 sq. ft. I would treat the entire building as a warehouse, and ventilate using the minimum rate of 0.12 CFM/sq. ft. However, rather than providing an individual ducted supply of outdoor air balanced to suit the area of each locker (there would only be as little as 3 CFM to the smallest ones), I believe it would be much more practical to instead supply the outdoor air down the corridors, and then ensure that there were openings of adequate size within the partition walls (with burglar bars for security) between the lockers and the corridor, to allow the outside air to mix with the stale air, and thus ventilate the entire building as though it were one single zone.

Has anyone had experience with designing a ventilation system for a building like this in the past, and if this design does indeed seem feasible, what would be a reasonable metric by which to size the openings between the corridor and locker, such that it would be "open" enough to be considered a single zone?

Thank you

 

[MJFerreira]

Hi

Im not 100% familiar with ashrea standards but you would need to look into opening size requirements for natural ventilation. In South Africa a space is considered naturally ventilated if the opening to outside (or ventilated space in your case) is not less than 5% of the floor area. However you could consider the door part of the opening area which is probably much greater than 5% of the floor area which would mean the additional openings isn't required). This is a bit dated now I see. What did you end up doing?