How Building Owners Can Balance Cost and Fresh Air in Building Ventilation

Ventilation is an integral part of the inner workings of any building. It’s the process through which fresh air is brought into a building and stale air expelled. This plays two vital roles – reducing the buildup of germs and other contaminants and regulating the concentration of CO₂. This is incredibly important because the air inside is often three times as polluted as the air outside, making ventilation an absolute necessity.

However, many ventilation systems today rely on a balance of 20% fresh air and 80% recirculated air. This leads to high CO₂ concentrations and more dust and contaminants accumulating. Finding the right solution to ventilation is a challenging problem. It requires the right approach and the right tools to implement that approach.

Balancing Air Conditioning and Ventilation

It might seem like there’s an obvious solution to the downsides caused by air recirculation – just use 100% fresh air. However, this isn’t realistic due to the balance that building owners have to find between ventilation and energy consumption.

In most places, incoming air is almost always being either cooled or heated. Air conditioning can consume a lot of energy, and bringing in more fresh air means that additional air must be cooled as well. As energy consumption rises, so does the cost. Constantly bringing in fresh air and cooling it is simply too expensive for most situations.

It isn’t always easy to determine what the right balance should be. Many facilities use a balance of 20% fresh air and 80% recirculated air simply based on the history of using that ratio. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides a range of resources and reports  to better evaluate and respond to the situation, but most building owners don’t approach ventilation with this level of detail.

This means that building owners are taking on the cost associated with cooling fresh air without really understanding whether or not they’re achieving the right ratio. They don’t understand what metrics this decision should be made with, and they don’t have access to reliable measurements either. Because they don’t really know for sure, many building owners are using either too much fresh air or too little.

The Negative Effects of Air Recirculation

If there weren’t downsides to air recirculation, then building owners wouldn’t have to try to balance bringing in fresh air with the cost of cooling it. However, there are many notable downsides to excessive air recirculation in buildings.

One of the most prominent problems is the buildup of germs, bacteria, and other contaminants. The World Health Organization provides many recommendations  for improving ventilation to prevent the spread of germs because it is such a widespread issue.

With lower fresh air intake, there is less stale air leaving the building at any given time. This creates higher concentrations of many contaminants, including dust, germs, and others. Providing 100% fresh air could drastically improve these concentrations but would also prove to be far too expensive due to the cost of cooling that air.

Another important area to consider here is increased CO₂ concentrations. When multiple people are in the same indoor environment, all of them are constantly breathing out CO₂. This isn’t a problem outdoors, as the constant supply of fresh air prevents accumulation in any one area. Indoors, however, the presence of multiple individuals and a lack of fresh air can cause notably higher CO₂ levels.

The Health Effects of Stale Air

The air in these environments is often called stale air, and it can be a major problem. It contributes to what the EPA calls “sick building syndrome,” a condition that seems to arise from the presence of low-quality air in office buildings and other indoor environments with plenty of people and limited ventilation.

There are many symptoms that can arise from breathing stale air. Occupants might experience dizziness, nausea, eye, nose, or throat irritation, headaches, fatigue, and more. Considering that this phenomenon is found mostly in offices and schools, it creates a considerable impact on the productivity and ability to perform of individuals when they need it most.

An environment with stale air is groggy and unwelcoming. It reduces the energy of the occupants inside and leaves them dissatisfied with their environment. It’s something that any building owner would want to avoid, but they need to find an effective method to do so without incurring high costs.

HVAC Management Practices

There are several areas that a building owner or manager can address to improve indoor air quality. They can replace or repair faulty equipment, upgrade their air purification system, or find solutions that let them better use what they already have.

Managing ventilation and air conditioning in buildings isn’t a simple problem to solve. Building owners can understand that they need to find the right balance between fresh air intake and AC costs, but they still need to find a way to do so.

Many building owners underestimate just how valuable high indoor air quality can be and push the balance much too far in the other direction. In fact, improving indoor air quality has numerous benefits that can directly impact the productivity of the individuals inside.

A study from the International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy in Denmark demonstrated the potential benefits of improved indoor air quality very clearly. In the examples they studied, they found that improving indoor air quality provided greater returns in terms of productivity than the increased cost of energy and maintenance.

However, this can only be taken so far. There comes the point where additional investment in indoor air quality stops having such a significant impact. From there, building owners need to take a more thoughtful and data-driven approach.

The problem comes down to optimization – how can building managers take what they have now and make decisions that will find the proper balance between air quality and cost. Like with any other optimization, they need access to reliable and accurate information about the impact that their decisions have and insight into what to do next.

Developing a Foundation for Improved HVAC Management

Like with any other challenge, HVAC management is best approached with the right tools for the job. Sol-In provides building owners and managers with those tools through the Sol-In System. This robust indoor air quality management solution takes building owners away from guesses and approximations and provides them with an approach based on measurement and analysis.

Measuring Indoor Air Quality

The simple fact of the matter is that building owners and managers can’t improve their ventilation balance without reliable data. They need to know what current air contaminants and CO₂ levels are, and they need to know how they change when decisions are made. Without actual measurements, this is all guesswork, and there’s no way to know whether or not any decision actually helps.

Sol-In makes indoor air quality measurement easy for building owners. The system uses distributed indoor air quality sensors to collect data from multiple points simultaneously. These sensors are implemented in individual rooms or areas to provide a clear picture of air quality throughout all indoor environments.

The indoor air quality data is available in real-time and is communicated in terms anyone can understand through the proprietary Sol-In Index. Historical data, trends, and even predictions provide an even more comprehensive overview of indoor air quality.

Actionable Air Quality Recommendations

Even with access to real-time measurements, most people won’t know how to take action to improve indoor air quality. Sol-In provides recommendations and suggestions that let building owners take clear steps to manage air quality. These can include when to begin maintenance on HVAC and air purification systems, how to optimize settings, and more.

These recommendations let building owners take the most efficient action possible to maintain indoor air quality. By acting at the points that make the most difference, they can ensure that air quality remains high with the lowest number of resources used.

Optimizing Ventilation by Targeting Specific Areas

Building owners often have access to very versatile controls for ventilation systems. They can adjust flow rates for individual rooms and areas, along with controlling AC and heating. However, they rarely make full use of these opportunities. By taking a more data-driven approach, these controls can be used to further optimize air quality and cost.

Sol-In provides indoor air quality data in real-time for individual indoor spaces. That means that HVAC management decisions can be based on what’s really happening at any given time. Instead of applying a one-size-fits-all approach to temperature and recirculation settings, building owners can address the needs of individual rooms.

As CO₂ levels increase, fresh air can be increased to counteract it. This takes all of the guesswork out of the process. Building managers can provide additional ventilation when it’s actually needed, improving air quality without wasting cooling costs on fresh air that wasn’t really needed.

A closer look at temperature cycles throughout the building can provide similar improvements. By understanding the temperature changes throughout the day and which rooms are occupied, building managers can avoid wasting HVAC resources where they aren’t needed.

With a data-driven approach, building managers can reduce energy waste and its associated costs while still keeping everyone in indoor spaces happy and healthy.

Getting Started With Sol-In

If you’re a building owner or manager or an HVAC supplier, you could benefit from the Sol-In System. It’s the best way to monitor and manage indoor air quality, providing numerous opportunities to optimize air quality and costs. If you’d like to hear more about the Sol-In System, you can contact our team today.