Green Building Blog

The need to address sustainability in the built environment is being accelerated by external concerns. Some of these are environmental and resource issues, rising energy prices, climate change, indoor environmental quality, international pressure, energy security, and natural disasters that seem to be happening more frequently than ever before. Sustainability focuses on the distant future. Resiliency focuses more on the present, e.g. How do we keep our buildings functioning during floods, long power outages, or protect building occupants from smoke and odors during wildfires?

With entire buildings, and even campuses, being shuttered for months on end, you can’t simply reopen a closed building and assume it will be business as usual. In reopening closed buildings during – or after – the pandemic, how building owners and maintenance staff manage the essential building functions of indoor air quality and potable water can have an enormous impact on the health and safety of tenants and visitors.

Note: Simon Ren, P.E., CEM, serves on the Detroit ASHRAE COVID-19 Task Force with Jim Newman, Sonya Pouncy and others. This article comes from a similar piece written for the Task Force. Members of the Task Force have been speaking to various business and building owner groups on their expertise as it pertains to mitigating the effects of the coronavirus in buildings. Find additional resources at DetroitAshrae.org/COVID_19_task_force.

Three steps to take now to improve Indoor Air Quality in the Age of Coronavirus.

(Updated chart 2/25/21) Whether your building is open, opening soon or closed until next year, you are behind if you’re not already planning to improve indoor air quality (IAQ) at your facility. (See “Why Good IAQ Matters in the Age of COVID-19.”) If you made changes to improve safety back in May or June (as we transitioned out of total lockdown), new information, products and tools that we discuss here may mean you’re looking at making changes again.

The good news is that there’s a lot of useful information out there. Some of it, however, gives conflicting messages. (See “100% Outside Air - Is it Really One of the Best Solutions for Flushing Buildings?”) Don’t jump in and grasp at the first shiny penny. Study the options, talk to experts, and then do what makes the most sense for your people and your bottom line.

In the age of COVID, we have to look at all available - and viable - options for occupant safety.

To help slow the spread of the coronavirus, ASHRAE, CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and WHO (the World Health Organization) currently recommend running HVAC systems for a minimum of 4 hours (but preferably more) on a daily basis with 100% outside air (OA) to “flush out” the virus. I would love to be 100% on board with this recommendation all year round. But I’m not.