Just because your building’s HVAC systems are hidden on rooftops and behind walls doesn’t mean the health of your building and indoor air quality (IAQ) must remain a mystery. Indoor air quality is a significant concern to businesses, building managers, tenants, and employees because it can impact the health, comfort, well-being, and productivity of building occupants.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, most Americans spend up to 90% of their time indoors, and many spend most of their working hours in an office environment. Some of these buildings may be inadequately ventilated. For example, mechanical ventilation systems may not be designed or operated to provide adequate amounts of outdoor air. With cooler weather around the corner, people will be indoors more, making indoor air quality a top priority.
Maintaining good indoor air quality requires attention to the building’s heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system, the design and layout of the space; real-time monitoring; and pollutant source management.
What’s Your Indoor Air Quality Plan?
Individual actions and layered prevention strategies remain essential measures to improve ventilation and indoor air quality. The EPA recently introduced the “Clean Air in Buildings Challenge” with basic principles and general actions to improve indoor air quality in buildings.
- Create an action plan for clean indoor air in your building(s) that assesses IAQ plans for upgrades and improvements and includes HVAC inspections and maintenance
- Optimize fresh air ventilation by bringing in and circulating clean outdoor air indoors
- Enhance air filtration and cleaning using the central HVAC system and in-room cleaning devices
- Get your community engaged in your action plan by communicating with building occupants to increase awareness, commitment, and participation in improving indoor air quality.
Facility owners and operations managers have seen how little changes significantly impact their businesses and people. Before implementing any changes, you must contact your trusted and knowledgeable HVAC provider for guidance in evaluating which strategies may prove most successful for your facility’s specific needs.
Indoor Air Quality Tools for Your Business
With a complete set of visuals and data monitoring for your facility, you can make informed decisions that impact your entire business. Are temperatures and CO2 level swings affecting morale or productivity? Are system inconsistencies driving up energy costs? Bassett Mechanical’s IAQ tools give you visibility and knowledge to make essential and cost-effective decisions.
Multiple public studies suggest indoor environments can profoundly impact building occupants’ health and decision-making performance. Having actionable, real-time data can contribute to increased occupant awareness and drive control strategies that can be deployed to deliver optimum, healthy indoor conditions.
Desktop Display Sensors
Many traditional hard-wired options are available but as the importance of indoor air quality evolves, desktop and mobile sensors are gaining popularity.
The desktop display sensors provide building occupants with simple visual indicators and alerts of critical indoor air quality measures. Many of the options measure and display crucial elements of healthy indoor air quality:
- Temperature
- Humidity
- Particulate matter (PM2.5)
- Carbon dioxide (CO₂)
- Total volatile organic compounds (TVOC)
- Carcinogen formaldehyde (HCHO)
The desktop displays are designed with different background colors to represent the ideal, good, and bad situations of the air quality and enable a visualized knowledge about CO2 concentration and other elements to offer businesses suggestions on what measures they should take.
The desktop display is perfect for a business that wants to monitor a few locations in their building (conference rooms, lunchrooms, offices, etc.) without installing hardware equipment. If a problem is found and data trends need to be collected, the desktop display sensor can be pulled into an existing system, giving the business complete transparency of the building’s health.
Your Indoor Air Quality Experts
With as much time as we spend indoors, we should do all we can to ensure that those indoors are healthy. Each facility has its own needs, challenges, and goals. Bassett Mechanical helps you customize a safe and responsible monitoring solution to meet your needs today with flexible support for your future.
Our team of experienced professionals provides the training and support you need to gain a more profound knowledge of your building’s health. We can analyze your results and partner to provide support and implement any necessary solutions.
To learn more about how desktop display sensors can support your indoor air quality and the effectiveness of your daily operations, email us at info@bassettmechanical.com.
You can also learn more about Indoor Air Quality by checking out the COVID-19 Educational Series.
