With the latest directives for distancing and personal protections what steps can you do as a building owner to make your building safer for occupants.
1. Most all air handling units incorporate a system called an economizer. This is a controlled damper that changes the direction of air flow to either outdoor air or return air or a mix of the two based on temperature. Generally the furnace section of the air handling unit is not designed to handle extreme temperatures all of the time so the system blends the air streams to maintain efficiency.
2. Right now for occupant safety it is better to not focus as much on economy as it is on health of occupancy so we need to temporarily fix this outdoor air control to provide as much outdoor air as possible. This can be done on packaged rooftop units by fixing the OSA damper position to 100%. On larger units controlled by building automation, BAS, the position of the return damper can be forced by changing the OSA set point. Contact your controls company if your maintenance staff is not
savvy on how to do this. This will have to be reset in the summer and late fall if conditions are such that the unit cannot handle the extremes.
3. Install Merv 14 or better electrostatic filter modules in lieu of bag filters. These are highly efficient, lower pressure drop and will allow the installation of more filtration with the same area. They will load up quicker with the changes to the economizer mentioned above but should capture most impurities. T
hey are not typically HEPA efficienc
y but consult your filter vendor to see about performance with viruses.
If you want to talk through how to do this on your system contact me at FETS. See our contact info on the main page.