Lisa Hickey and Darryl DeAngelis explore the essentials of indoor air quality, from VOCs and CO2 to ventilation strategies and MERV ratings, giving FMs practical insight into maintaining a healthy indoor environment.
In today's episode, Lisa Hickey and Darryl DeAngelis, a business developer at EBTRON with 40 years in the HVAC industry, discuss the critical aspects of indoor air quality (IAQ) that facility managers should monitor. They delve into various metrics such as VOCs, CO2 levels and particulate matter, emphasizing the importance of proper ventilation and filtration systems. They also share insights on demand control ventilation, the significance of MERV ratings and the impact of temperature and humidity on air quality.
This episode is sponsored by ODP Business Solutions!
Darryl DeAngelis: [00:00:00] The things that maybe harm you the most is in the air. We have a lot of protection through the FDA and the EPA for our drinking water for, the sodas or juices, things that are produced for us to consume, but we don't have the same amount of protection in the air. Yet, we consume a lot more air than we do fluids during the day.
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In today's episode, Lisa Hickey and Darryl DeAngelos, a business developer at Tron with 40 years in the HVAC industry, discuss the critical aspects of indoor air quality that facility managers should monitor. They delve into various metrics such as VOCs. CO2 levels and [00:01:00] particulate matter emphasizing the importance of proper ventilation and filtration systems.
They also share insights on demand control, ventilation, the significance of Merv ratings and the impact of temperature and humidity on air quality. Now let's get into it.
Lisa Hickey: Hello everyone. I'm Lisa Hickey with EBTRON and on the line also we have Darryl DeAngelis.
Darryl DeAngelis: Hi, I am Darryl DeAngelis business developer for EBTRON. I've been in the HVAC industry for 40 years and happy to be here.
Lisa Hickey: We've been involved with IFMA for the past few years and over time. We've heard numerous different questions. So Darrell, let's start with what are the top indoor air quality metrics facility managers should be tracking?
Darryl DeAngelis: Typically, what you see being tracked in buildings today, a CO2 particulate matter, VOCs, temperature, humidity, [00:02:00] and airflow. I'll focus on VOCs because it's one of the most complicated and necessary things to, to think about when you're working indoors.
So people try to sell or present that we, you can have A-T-V-O-C sensor and it's gonna detect the air quality in a space. The problem is a total VOC sensor doesn't necessarily detect. Everything that's harmful in the space, it's gonna give you one output or a summation of many different chemicals that could be in the air at a time, because the summation of the gases that it's detecting may not be harmful.
Or they may be harmful. So it's really hard to know. The only way to determine that is to do a targeted measurement, which you would wanna hire an industrial hygienist to do. The challenge that we have are things that are the most harmful for you. For example, formaldehyde, which is using the construction of building materials.
It's quite harmful to people and it does off gas in buildings on a regular [00:03:00] basis, but the formalde high sensors are not really commercialized to hang on the wall in such a way that they can resolve the critical values that you need to so you need someone to check that.
So you can use TVOC sensors as a way to indicate that you may have a problem. But they're far from a measurement of indoor air quality or total measurement. That's why I, you know, when you asked the question, Lisa, I mentioned multiple things because you should be looking at multiple things in the space.
Lisa Hickey: Right. So regarding VOCs, how do you remove them from the air?
Darryl DeAngelis: Yeah, it's a very good question. I mean, dilution has been known for centuries now. Bringing in outside air which has a lower value of VOCs. At least that's the assumption. A lot of times VOCs do travel from the outside to the inside. What you typically find is the levels of contaminants indoors are higher than the little of contaminants outdoors.
So by bringing in more ventilation air, you dilute the contaminants [00:04:00]indoors. Plus there are some contaminants that are generated indoors as well as those contaminants that generated outdoors. So it's really understanding if you are in an area where you have high level of adult contaminants, then in addition to using a dilution, you want to have some sort of a filter that can remove these type of contaminants.
And that would be typically like a carbon impregnated filter that removes gases from the air. It's good. It's a good idea to have these things in a system as well. You can have them in the space itself, of course. Another method is source exhaust. If you do have a process where you do know you have VOCs that are being produced, then you want to exhaust the process directly there and then make it up with ventilation air.
Lisa Hickey: so are dilution rates constant?
Darryl DeAngelis: Well in HVAC we typically dilute for body odor more than anything else. The ventilation rates that are set in Ashray 62 are based on the human occupant. There's a little bit that's based on the building generated [00:05:00] items in, in the space, but the majority of it is based on the human occupant.
And there's a process called demand control ventilation, where the ventilation rates are reduced down for injury saving purposes. And the reduction in ventilation rates is, are supposed to match the number of occupants in the space. They don't always do that. But you know, I think when LEAD came out in the early two thousands that was the right approach 30% more outside air for more dilution, that was is because the ventilation rates over time have dropped significantly in the past a hundred years. So it all has to do with energy. We're trying to reduce the ventilation, but you know, we spend 90% of our time indoors. We should be taking better care of the indoor and there is no preset standards for what is healthy indoors.
Lisa Hickey: Okay. Okay, so you touched upon DCV. So is most of that controlled by CO2 or.
Darryl DeAngelis: It's, it is quite often Lisa, that [00:06:00] CO2 is the majority way to control DCV. And again, CO2 is a marker of occupants because we all respirate, CO2, in fact we breathe about a gallon of air every minute. You know, when you think about what's in the air, you can't see what's in the air.
The things that maybe harm you the most is in the air. We have a lot of protection through the FDA and the EPA for our drinking water for, the sodas or juices, things that are produced for us to consume, but we don't have the same amount of protection in the air yet. We consume a lot more air than we do fluids during the day while CO2, because we respirate, we breathe in oxygen and nitrogen in the gases, and we expel CO2.
We can use it as a human marker, but we have to wait for CO2 to fill up the space. So when people first come into the space, the CO2 level is pretty much equal to what it is outside, which is somewhere between three 50 and four 50 parts per million typically. And then we have to wait for that value to rise.
There are other faster [00:07:00] methods to respond with ventilation. You can count the people as they walk in the space. You can use proximities through badges or other type of sensors that directly automatically count. And you can tie that to building automation system so you're immediately ventilating for the people that you have present and not waiting for the CO2 develop in space.
And, you know, think about a movie theater. A movie theater starts. At a particular time. If the movie theater is only half full, those theaters are quite large, so it would take half the movie for the CO2 level to rise up. But when they sell the tickets to the movie, they know exactly how many people are going to the theater.
So it's very easy to say, oh, I have half the amount of people in the theater. So that's ventilate for half the expected people.
Lisa Hickey: Now have you seen that most theaters do occupancy counters or ticketing based on, you know, who's going to the theater and then work the ventilation accordingly, or no?
Darryl DeAngelis: No it's not that common. It should be more common because a CO2 sensor is a quick and easy [00:08:00] way to do it. And typically that's what engineers do and facility operators have to deal with these problems, these
Lisa Hickey: Okay. So what should be considered when reducing ventilation rates?
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Darryl DeAngelis: Well, certainly you have to consider when you're reducing the ventilation rates do you have exhaust rates as well that are removing air beyond that because you have to make sure that you reduce the rates, in concert with each [00:09:00] other because you have exhaust for a specific reason, whether it be toilet exhaust, whether you have a kitchen and you're exhausting for cooking.
If you reduce your outside rate too much, you may create a negative pressure in the space, and then you could bring in contaminants to the walls, windows to the doors. And this would be a big issue. For example, if you have a wildfire smoke outside Ohio Air Quality Index, which in the Northeast where I am is what we've had this past week.
So there's been a bunch of particles floating around the air from Canadian wildfire Smokes. And so you don't wanna, you don't wanna bring that directly through, through the doorway because it's unfiltered. You want to have, make sure you have particulate matter filters in the Airstream in order to filter that out.
And this is where, you know, PM fil pm counters come in handy in the space. If you're sensing the PM in the space, it can be a very valuable indicator of what your indoor air quality is. From a perspective of that particular matter is one of the most dangerous things to human health. These small particles that are size 10:00 PM or and lower, [00:10:00] are between coarse and fine to ultra fine.
And these get into the upper area of the lungs down to the lower area of the lungs. And the ultra fine particles can get into the bloodstream. So this can cause long-term effect for people.
Lisa Hickey: So that ties back to the filtration that we talked about earlier, right?
Darryl DeAngelis: That's correct. So, I mean, what we're trying to do in a building is we want to provide clean ventilation, air. These are two things that we know that creates a healthy space, ventilation through dilution. And I have to say that density has an effect. We talk about temperature, humidity temperature.
Humidity is not only there for comfort. But it also, temperature, humidity actually has an impact. The density as, as well as where you are, you know, in, in the elevation, barometric pressure, et cetera. That impacts, well, when we talk about dilution air, we're talking about the mass flow of air because we're moving mass contaminants in the space.
And we would talk about measuring CFM of air, for example, or liters per or second. That's volumetric rates. So we have to think making [00:11:00] conversion to what mass flow is, with respect to that. But cleaning the air is definitely a required things. There is something that I didn't mention, like uv, you can use ultraviolet light because that can inactivate different viruses or.
Bio aerosols are in the space. But you know, they, you have to be careful what kind of UV you have because it aqua also have another reaction in the space. Certain UV can produce ozone. And ozone is an oxidant that reacts with other things, chemicals in the space, and produces new chemicals.
And then that gets into your.
Lisa Hickey: Gotcha. Gotcha. And then there's always a lot of talk about different Merv rating filters. Right. I guess the other thing is to make sure you have filters in your systems and then they're changed on a schedule, correct.
Darryl DeAngelis: That is correct. In the US we use Merv. In other parts of the world, they may use an ISO standard, the ISO standard, you can directly see. You have an ISO PM 10 filter. You have an ISO PM 2.5 filter. The challenge with Merv, of course it has a testing across a range of different particular matters.
And in that [00:12:00] at some PM ranges around, for example three it's is a dip and it's less effective. It's very effective at 10 and maybe more effective at smaller ranges. You should always try to strive for the highest Merv or pm. Filter level that you can get to remove the smallest particles that you can get, that your CY system can handle.
There is a thought out there in, in the market that it, the higher the filtration level is, the higher the pressure drop, and that's not always the case. You have to shop your filters because there are some Merv 13 filters that have the same pressure drop as a Merv eight filter. And as far as Ashray 62 is concerned as far as the requirements for the mechanical codes, is they're really focused on filtering through weed coils and making sure that you don't have by microbiome growing on your coils or mold growing on your coils and things like that so that they're not really concerned about removing it in some places. For example, like in California you have a Murph 13 requirement. So if you can make sure [00:13:00] you have a higher mur rph 13 than your protecting your yourself from contaminants inside as well as outside.
Lisa Hickey: And how do we determine code ventilation rates?
Darryl DeAngelis: Well, it's, you know, a lot of people will use CO2 to measure the ventilation in the space. And CO2 again is a good marker because it's directly marketing the people. However, because of the illustration that I used before, like the movie theater where it takes a long time to the CO2 to build up in space, especially at lower occupancy, it may be a false indication.
So you think, oh, look, my CO2 level is 800, but it hasn't reached steady state yet. So you think you have a lot more ventilation than you actually do. So really the best way is to directly measure their ventilation rate from the outside. Then you know that you're maintaining that ventilation rate. If you're measuring that ventilation rate and you're measuring the CO2, you can make those two systems work in concert, and you actually can calculate the number of people that you have and then you can match it.
Or as we said, you can actually count the people and then. Directly adjust the [00:14:00] ventilation rate for that because the ventilation rates are a ventilation rate per person based standard.
Lisa Hickey: And regarding airflow measurement solutions, are they all equal?
Darryl DeAngelis: There are a lot of different airflow measurement solutions out there. First of all, when you have your building first constructed and the building is commissioned in balance, you have specialists that go out there for test adjusting and balancing, and they have handheld instrumentation that they go ahead and they measure the building when they set it up.
To verify that yes, it is within the design parameters, it's usually plus or minus 10% as they go. However, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty in hand handheld measurements. That pedal traverse is typically the best method to do it. But if you have low velocity, pet traverses don't work very well below 600 feet per minute.
So if you're trying to measure low velocity, it's, it can be a challenge and you can have a lot of error in your measurement. There are installed airflow, permanent airflow measurements, sensors that you can buy though. You have to really look at the performance [00:15:00] of these type of sensors.
Ashray actually has, in their book of fundamentals, they have a chapter 38 to talk about velocity measurement. They have a table in there that actually defines and compares different type of velocity measurements. So I would refer to that table.
Lisa Hickey: And then how does one determine clean air rates?
Darryl DeAngelis: Yeah. So after, after COVID Ashra developed this standard, 2 41 2 41 is yet to be an ANSI standard, but it is published. It's grown through the ANSI process now, and it's just recently been. Put up a public review and they had over 110 comments with respect to it, and this is what Ashra does as an organization and specialized in the HVAC.
We, we constantly are trying to improve our methods and use this entity process to get, make sure that we have a lot of feedback from a lot of expertise in the marketplace during the development of. 2 41 the concept of equivalent cleaning air came about because in order to move these infectious particles from the air at sometimes it would take four to four to [00:16:00] 10 times the amount of ventilation you would have at for minimum ventilations per, for a standard 62 or maybe standard one 70 for healthcare.
And you can't really increase the ventilation , that much. So you would add filtration. To help offset the ventilation. And then you have equi clean air. But you have to make sure that the filtration that you're adding has been tested to perform at the ventilation rate. So if you're not actively measuring the ventilation rate in that filtration path.
Then you may not know when that if for some reason that filter is being degraded by the flow rate. So you have to consider just because you bought a filter that says it, it performs at this rate that it's not always performing at that rate. So measuring, validating, always what your clean air rate is necessary.
Lisa Hickey: And then I guess where, you know, within the HVAC system, where should the air be measured At the supply return [00:17:00] Outdoor air.
Darryl DeAngelis: it depends. If you have a cell contain filtration system as I just mentioned, then you wanna measure that on the supply because that's your delivery rate to the space. Your equivalent clean air rate, if you're measuring, if you wanna determine what your ventilation rate you wanna measure at the outside air and certainly if you to maintain pressurization in the building is created by the mechanical systems.
So the HVAC systems, as I mentioned before, if you have more exhaust than you have air coming in from outside, then you have a negatively pressurized space. So it's important to understand you that you have enough measurements so you can see what the differential is between the air going out of the space.
And into this space. So certainly in spaces like laboratory and healthcare, you typically measure the supply and the return in each space. For pressurization in the building you wanna look at the supply and return coming from the air airline unit be, those are the best place to measure as well as measuring the outside air for the ventilation [00:18:00] rate.
Lisa Hickey: Okay. The other thing, temperature and humidity must have an impact on indoor air quality.
Darryl DeAngelis: It, it does. You know, there's a lot of studies that say it. We're lucky. When you live in a developed world, you, you're not really affected by temperature. You go to your office and it's well temperature controlled, but people that, that live in their houses that don't have air conditioning or live in parts of the world where they don't have air conditioning, they have that challenges.
And so, heat, stress is a big challenge in many parts of the world. So, it also impacts your ability to perform. So the warmer the space is, the lower your cognitive value humidity has another impact. It, it has been found that the air. Humidity rate relative humidity between 40 and 60% are really optimal for health of the lungs and health of the body.
The viruses will spread at much drier, more, more actively at much drier air. Air. So when it's really dry in the wintertime and your humidity, the humidity is 20% of the space then you're more [00:19:00] apt to catch a virus.
Lisa Hickey: there anything else that I might have missed, Darrell, that we should cover for facility managers?
Darryl DeAngelis: Well, certainly one thing you to think about, we talk about the PM in particular matter. We talk about filters. You know, just make sure your facilities are clean. Dust is food for microbes. And also dust particles also float in the air. Small particles like the COVID-19 virus, that they don't fly around naked.
They're typically in their aerosolized, in moisture. But they're very small and they can float in the air for long periods of time. And other, these other VOCs can float in the air for long periods of time as well. So you have to be aware these things can last. Mold is another issue. You certainly wanna make sure you don't have any wet spots in the space, but mold can happen from.
Cold air from the HVAC system blowing on something that and causing condensation on the wall or furniture. And it can cause mold to grow. It can also be from having living, being in the humid climate and having a negative pressurized space where you bring in moisture through the shell of the [00:20:00] building to envelope through the building.
So that can cause a problem as well. So I would say, yeah you want to look at those microbes that are in the space as well. You have to be concerned about that.
Lisa Hickey: Okay, great. Well, great. Thanks. I think our time is.
Darryl DeAngelis: Yeah I just, I'll just mention that there, there's a a global council called the Green Building Council. They have a health and wellbeing framework, which is really good. Harvard University has its healthy buildings foundation. And this are two good resources to, to look at for creating healthy buildings.
Lisa Hickey: Okay, great. Thanks.
Darryl DeAngelis: Have a nice day everyone.
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