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Natural Ventilation Stops Infection Spread

Posted April 08, 2010 8:16 AM

Working while sick may display devotion and company loyalty. But it can spread disease to fellow employees. A sick office is not a productive office. The concept of presenteeism or remaining at work while sick is experienced globally. In the U.S. it costs employers up to $250 billion per year. The answer is increasing the amount of clean outside air that enters the building; it not only reduces annual cooling and heating costs, it greatly improves IAQ. Is presenteeism a problem in your office? If so, what steps are you taking to reduce the spread of infection?

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Associate

Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: India
Posts: 45
#1

Re: Natural Ventilation Stops Infection Spread

04/09/2010 3:04 AM

Dear friends,

In addition to above, please add a few other problems faced after air conditioning of offices:

1. The physical movements become rather sluggish.

2. In case of field cum office job, the willingness for field job is reduced and the

frequent variation in body temperature calls for sickness.

3. In most of the cases the glass panes are permanently fixed which causes regular

energy wastage.

Regards.

__________________
Ram
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Guru

Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 684
#2
In reply to #1

Re: Natural Ventilation Stops Infection Spread

04/09/2010 12:43 PM

Hi Sahni,

Air conditionning is a big problem for spreading everything from bacteries to moulds as fungus, and many other small particles come out from an old filter.

People's physical sluggishness you tailking or something else? Let us know.

The waste of energy comes from over acting with the air conditionning systems. Temperature comes down too much and people change location or go outside and get a variation of 25 to 35*C. It's a shock and many cannot resist to that! Adjust to 20*C and everyone will be happy, Gil.

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Anonymous Poster
#3

Re: Natural Ventilation Stops Infection Spread

05/11/2010 8:15 PM

In this thought It is a right thought. We work with adding ventalation in older homes, and older offices. What we find is that if there is not enough air changes per hour, and people (sick), or otherwise, the moisture caused will cause illness. what we have found is adding the mechanical venting solves this problem, and brings in the fresh air. Which in turn also vents out he germs, and other airborne pathagens.

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Anonymous Poster
#4
In reply to #3

Re: Natural Ventilation Stops Infection Spread

05/12/2010 4:28 PM

Hi Guest,

It's necessary to eliminate excess of humidity in the air created by AC by injecting a certain amount of exterior air, which reduces humidity, suspended particles, odours, and other organic (living) elements from the area (room, apartment, house or building). I don't have statistics about the ratio of AC air flow against fresh air alone, and AC plus fresh air together. It could be interesting to know the numbers and see the effect on people during a short and long period of time. Wait for input, Gil.

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Anonymous Poster
#5

Re: Natural Ventilation Stops Infection Spread

08/04/2010 11:46 AM

You are assuming that outside air is clean, which, in many locations, is not true. Also, the more outside air brought in, the more energy is used to heat, or cool, it to a comfortable temp. The real answer is to use advanced air purification technology in the air return stream, which exists today, to kill all allergens, virures, molds, VOCs and particulates and save the cost of heating and cooling outside air. This is a proven solution.

PJK

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Anonymous Poster
#6

Re: Natural Ventilation Stops Infection Spread

08/12/2010 4:45 PM

Actually, we encountered that sluggishness and presenteeism of our employees because of our office temperature. What we did is to buy more air conditioners and renovate the office for comfortability. Since we're in Indianapolis, we decided to look for an HVAC (Indianapolis based) company to repair and maintain our air conditioning system, hope that could help.

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