How Companies Can Optimize and Reduce Their Indoor Air Quality Management Costs

Businesses and other organizations are responsible for maintaining indoor air quality within their buildings and facilities. They have a duty toward students, employees, residents, shoppers, and any other occupants to provide fresh, clean air. However, improved air quality comes at a cost, and companies need to be able to weigh that cost against benefits carefully and accurately.

The Cost of Indoor Air Quality

Every type of building will have some kind of HVAC system in place responsible for providing heating, cooling, and ventilation. The scale of these systems can vary widely when considering all different types of buildings, from single-family homes to skyscrapers. Indoor air quality is a major concern at every level.

Indoor areas can accumulate harmful airborne contaminants at levels 2 to 5 times higher than outdoors. This leads to an unpleasant and unhealthy environment, one that has real short-term and long-term health risks for occupants. Organizations can’t have the occupants of their buildings getting sick, becoming unproductive, or being turned off by low air quality and going somewhere else.

To maintain high indoor air quality and prevent these negative consequences, organizations will have to incur both capital and operational costs. Dealing with these problems requires effective equipment that is maintained and operated properly, which can be expensive if organizations do not take a deliberate and careful approach.

Purchasing and Replacing Equipment

There is, of course, the cost of purchasing HVAC and air purification equipment in the first place. The systems will have to be designed with the specific needs of that building in mind. However, organizations also need reliable performance metrics to ensure that their systems are delivering.

If a building has low indoor air quality, one possible explanation is that its ventilation system just isn’t large enough for its space. Replacing a ventilation system can improve indoor air quality but will be a considerable expense. It’s best for organizations to make sure they have real air quality information to make these kinds of decisions and to explore other potential options first.

Operating Equipment

Ventilation systems require energy to run, creating a continuous operational cost for organizations. Running the system at full capacity all the time may be able to improve indoor air quality but also drastically increases energy consumption. Finding the right balance can be a major challenge and is impossible without accurate performance metrics.

There is also an additional energy cost as more fresh air is brought into the building because the outdoor air must be heated or cooled to the building temperature. However, recirculating air decreases indoor air quality. This is a challenging optimization problem that is different for every building, a problem that can only be solved with real indoor air quality data.

Maintaining Equipment

HVAC and air purification systems also require both routine and unexpected maintenance. This is one of the most difficult costs to accurately evaluate and plan. Maintenance has a considerable impact on all aspects of the system’s performance, so a lack of proper maintenance can increase energy costs, reduce air quality, and lead to additional equipment replacement costs.

However, maintenance itself also incurs costs as parts need to be replaced and technicians need to be paid to do so. This can often mean bringing in specialized contractors, which can quickly become a considerable cost if maintenance is being performed more often than is truly required.

Developing a proper maintenance schedule is essential to finding the proper balance. However, this schedule can’t be developed accurately unless air quality performance metrics are captured and tracked.

The Environmental Impact of Indoor Air Quality

Today, companies and organizations are often judged based on environment, sustainability, and governance (ESG) principles. The environment is among the most important criteria, with climate change and sustainable energy use being among the most prominent topics today.

It’s important to conserve energy to plan for a better world of tomorrow. In addition, this also creates another potential cost to consider when managing indoor air quality, the potential cost of lost business due to public ESG perception.

Organizations need to engage in practices that conserve energy to maintain good public perception. However, organizations need to use at least some energy to maintain indoor air quality and provide a hospitable environment for their occupants. To find the right balance, they need the data to show how their energy use affects indoor air quality.

Taking Control of Indoor Air Quality

Sol-In gives organizations the indoor air quality information they need to take control and optimize their air quality costs. The system collects air quality data at multiple points throughout indoor environments with distributed IoT sensors. These sensors send data to the Sol-In cloud, where the proprietary Sol-In Index provides analyses and insights that make better indoor air quality management possible.

Traditional methods for operating HVAC and air purification systems rely on principles that can’t account for real-time air quality. Baselines for operation are set based on estimates and planning, but the system isn’t managed with air quality parameters providing accurate and reliable feedback.

This leads to situations where the system provides low indoor air quality, uses excessive energy, or isn’t properly maintained. Sol-In changes everything by providing the necessary real-time and predictive feedback to maintain indoor air quality, reduce energy use, and improve maintenance scheduling.

Organizations are able to use smart ventilation principles to truly optimize their indoor air quality management. Sol-In uses advanced algorithms and machine learning to predict indoor air quality, allowing organizations to adjust HVAC and air purifier operations accordingly.

Because Sol-In uses multiple sensors in different areas, organizations can target the specific areas where indoor air quality needs improvement. As occupancy and other factors change over time and at different locations, ventilation can be adjusted to provide improved air quality when and where it’s really needed.

Sol-In is an advanced solution to a longstanding problem that allows organizations to improve indoor air quality management without investing in new HVAC and air purification systems, saving them both capital and operational costs.

Getting Started With Sol-In

If you are a building owner or manager, or an HVAC service provider, you can reach out to Sol-In today to find out what our innovative system can do for you. We can show you how our solution can save you money while keeping indoor air quality high in your building or facility.