ASHRAE 110: Why a Hood Passes the Lab and Fails On Site
Compliance reviewed by Onur Oncer, SDVOSB Materials compliance lead.
ASHRAE Standard 110-2016 (RA 2025), Method of Testing Performance of Laboratory Fume Hoods, is run in three conditions: as-manufactured, as-installed, as-used. A hood that passed in the manufacturer's test room can fail in yours, because your room is part of the test. LabTECH Air, part of SDVOSB Materials Technology & Supply LLC, writes which condition the contract pays for.
The Room Is Part of the Test
A fume hood is not a sealed machine. It is the front end of an air system that includes the exhaust fan, the duct run, the supply diffusers, the door people push open all shift, and the aisle a technician walks past the sash. Change any of those and containment changes with it.
ASHRAE, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, says as much in the standard's own scope. Standard 110 is described by ASHRAE as a test method intended primarily for laboratory and factory testing, and only as an aid in evaluating installed performance. The factory result is the one the method was built for. Your lab is the harder case. Our fume hood and air safety procurement guide covers the equipment. This one covers the test.
What the Three Test Conditions Actually Mean
Three entries follow. Each names the condition, where the test happens, and who normally pays.
As-manufactured (AM). A purpose-built test room at the manufacturer or an independent lab, air and traffic held still. Paid by the manufacturer, handed over as a certificate.
As-installed (AI). Your room, hood on the permanent exhaust, building air balanced, nothing in the hood and nobody working. Paid by whoever the contract names, frequently nobody.
As-used (AU). Your room in service, apparatus on the work surface, staff at the bench, doors and traffic normal. Owned by the facility safety program after turnover.
The gap between AM and AI is where projects get hurt. AM says the hood is capable. AI says the installation is. A buyer who takes an AM certificate as proof of installed performance has bought a statement about a room in another state.
What the Tracer Gas Test Measures
An ASHRAE 110 run has three parts, and buyers tend to know only the first. Face velocity gets measured across a grid at the sash opening. Airflow gets made visible with smoke at the airfoil and across the work surface. Then the containment test: a mannequin stands at the sash, tracer gas is released from an ejector inside the hood, and a detector at the mannequin's breathing zone records what escapes.
The report gives a control level, written as the letters for the condition tested and a measured concentration at the breathing zone. Here is the part that surprises people. Standard 110 is a method, not a threshold. If your specification never states an acceptance level, you have commissioned a measurement that no hood can fail.
The Award That Buys One Test and Needs Two
The common failure is not a bad hood. It is a solicitation that buys the as-manufactured result and never funds the as-installed one.
The two tests sit with different parties. The hood supplier ships the AM certificate with the product. The mechanical contractor balances the air and hands over a balance report, which is not a containment test. The commissioning scope may or may not name ASHRAE 110. Nobody refuses the work. There is no line item.
An AI test costs money, needs a quiet room other trades want, and cannot run until the air is balanced, which lands late. On a one-for-one hood swap in a lab whose supply air nobody touched, some buyers reasonably skip it. On a new build, or a renovation that moved a diffuser, skipping it means the first honest containment data lands after occupancy, when the fix is a change order.
OSHA Puts the Duty on the Employer, Not the Manufacturer
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule at 29 CFR 1910.1450 of the Code of Federal Regulations requires a written Chemical Hygiene Plan. Paragraph (e)(3)(iii) requires that plan to include a requirement that fume hoods and other protective equipment are functioning properly, plus the measures taken to ensure it. That duty sits with the employer. A manufacturer's certificate is evidence about a product, not about the hood on your bench.
Six Things the Specification Has to State
Ranked by how often the omission causes an argument after award:
Which conditions are required. Name AM, AI and AU, and say which are for record only.
The acceptance level. Standard 110 supplies the method. Your specification supplies the number a result must meet.
Who tests, and their independence. A test run by the party that sold the hood is worth less than one that is not.
When. After air balance, before beneficial occupancy, room in the state the condition names.
What the report contains and who gets it. Velocity data, flow visualization notes, and the control level, delivered to the owner.
What a failing result triggers. Who diagnoses, who remediates, at whose cost, and whether retest is included. This gets negotiated at the worst possible moment if it is not written down.
How LabTECH Air Approaches a Hood Package
LabTECH Air supplies chemical fume hoods, portable fentanyl and opioid hoods, biosafety enclosures from Baker, clean rooms from NICOS Clean Rooms, and casework from ONEPOINTE Solutions, with post-install testing and certification scoped as a service rather than assumed. Which condition gets tested, and when, is settled during specification. Past performance includes the U.S. Army Watervliet Arsenal Laboratory, West Point, Ft Sill, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
SDVOSB Materials Technology & Supply LLC is a certified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business and certified HUBZone small business under U.S. Small Business Administration programs, 100% veteran owned and 100% disabled owned, all verifiable on the company's SBA Small Business Search profile. It holds no General Services Administration Schedule of its own; GSA orders run through GSA-registered partner vendors. It does hold TIPS, The Interlocal Purchasing System, contract 230701. Unique Entity Identifier K39HBMPLN4B3, Commercial and Government Entity code 7YX60, registered active on SAM.gov.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ASHRAE 110 testing required by law?
Not directly. ASHRAE 110 is a voluntary consensus standard that becomes binding when a contracting officer writes it into the solicitation. What is enforceable is the OSHA requirement at 29 CFR 1910.1450 that a Chemical Hygiene Plan address proper functioning of fume hoods. Labs generally meet that by adopting a containment test method, and 110 is the one in use.
What is the difference between a face velocity check and an ASHRAE 110 test?
Face velocity measures air speed at the sash opening. It is quick, cheap, and it tells you nothing about whether contaminants stay inside. ASHRAE 110 includes a velocity traverse, but its point is the tracer gas measurement at a mannequin's breathing zone. A hood can hold its specified face velocity and still spill.
Who should perform the as-installed test?
An independent certifier, engaged by the owner or through the commissioning agent, rather than by the hood supplier. Independence matters because an as-installed result can implicate the product, the mechanical installation, or the balance work, and the party holding the wrench should not score its own work.
Do ductless fume hoods get tested the same way?
Containment testing still applies, but a filtered recirculating hood adds a filter breakthrough question a ducted hood does not have, and it returns air to the room rather than out the stack. Choosing between the configurations is its own analysis, covered in our comparison of ducted and ductless fume hoods for federal labs.
Does a biosafety cabinet get an ASHRAE 110 test?
No. Biosafety cabinets are field certified under NSF/ANSI 49, a separate scheme with its own certifier qualifications, and the two should not be conflated in one specification. Containment tier selection is covered in our post on biosafety level containment tiers in federal lab procurement.
What happens if a hood fails as-installed?
Diagnosis first, because the cause is usually the room rather than the hood: supply air throwing across the face, a door creating a cross draft, an exhaust fan short of design flow. Remedies range from redirecting a diffuser to rebalancing the zone. Write the remediation path and retest duty into the contract before award.
Scope the Containment Test With the Hood Package
Buying fume hoods or air safety enclosures for a federal, state, or institutional lab? Email LabTECH@SDVOSBmaterials.com or call (917) 216-9400, or start at our contact page. Broader lab scope sits in the federal laboratory procurement guide and on the LabTECH laboratory division page.
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