7 Steps to Improved Indoor Air Quality
Keep your school community safe from airborne pathogens and contaminants.
Access your iAQ action plan template
This evidence-based recommendation helps protect teachers and students to minimize learning interruptions.
Determine your HVAC system’s baseline
IAQ improvements start with assessing the baseline of your current HVAC solution. Determine how clean outdoor air enters your building and travels to indoor spaces. Document how your HVAC system works, and understand the features your HVAC system offers.
Assess ventilation, filtration, and air cleaning
Once you gather baseline information about your current HVAC system, it’s time to call in an expert, like Airdale’s IAQ specialists, to level with you about where your IAQ is today and what adjustments to make to improve. The areas you need to address include ventilation, filtration, and air cleaning. Our IAQ Action Plan Template gives you more parameters to ask your HVAC expert as he or she walks you through your system, ensuring first-class IAQ.
Implement IAQ assessment approaches
Even if your HVAC equipment appears to be in good shape, it’s still important to measure metrics that can indicate your system could be improved upon to enhance IAQ. You’ll find benchmark metrics that can give you a good idea of whether your system yields good results in our IAQ Action Plan Template.
Verify or measure air delivery for each room or space
Clean air is a combination of outdoor air and recirculated filtered HVAC air. Since different rooms in your building(s) serve a variety of purposes, you may need to adjust the amount of clean air distributed to each room. In our IAQ Action Plan Template, you’ll find the equation that can can guide you in determining how much clean air each room needs.
Determine if you need to alter airflow in higher-risk areas of your building
COVID-19 changed how facility and maintenance managers approach IAQ. It’s important to assess whether certain rooms or areas require special consideration to ensure the health and safety of building occupants. Key room types for you to review whether your HVAC system has the functionality to accommodate the higher risk are provided in our IAQ Action Plan Template.
Plan for regular maintenance
Regularly checking the health of your HVAC system and performing all customary maintenance activities is a simple step to improve IAQ. Clogged, overused filters, for example, can drastically impact the quality of the air in your school’s classrooms. Following the below maintenance recommendations can preserve your HVAC system and protect your students and teachers.
Ensure your in-house IAQ experts receive ongoing education and training
Even if you work for the school, not an HVAC manufacturer or provider, you’re uniquely positioned to be an advocate for your school’s IAQ. Increasing your knowledge base can help you identify issues before they become worse, prolong the lifespan of your HVAC components, and overall, improve IAQ for students and teachers who spend many hours in the buildings you maintain.
