Poor school IAQ

John R. Hall

Besides the importance of CO testing and detection, I am also getting on the soapbox this year for a subject near to my heart -- poor indoor air quality in school buildings. Our son suffers from a mild form of asthma and I have no doubt that the air he breathes in his school contributes to this problem. And did you know that the EPA has identifed almost 60,000 U.S. school buildings that have poor IAQ, leading to health problems for school children and teachers? That's bad.

I am putting together a presentation on poor school IAQ which I will show to contractor groups this year, including my seminar at ISH-NA in Boston this fall.

I'd like Wallies to let me know if they work on any school buildings and if they have encountered situations where the HVAC equipment is poor conditiom, classrooms have blocked or obstructed return vents, and other examples that contribute to poor IAQ. Pictures of these problems would be a great help, too -- for my visual presentation.

I'm not sure poor school IAQ will garner the passion from contractors as the CO issue, but I think it is of vital concern to us as parents and you are businesspeople.

Thanks.

Jim Davis

School building

School buildings have historically been one of the most abused buildings anywhere in the country. Years ago when in Cincinnati, our Board of Health was concerned with the indoor air quality of a school that was getting a new roof. They were not allowed to enter the building unless and adult filed a complaint. Apparently there are no laws to protect children in public buildings. Multiple times while testing schools boilers I could have been seriously poisoned in the mechanical room had I not been monitoring it. But it was not the equipment in the room. The combustion air openings were directly out the walls where the parking lot was. Busses idling their engines while waiting for school to let out totally fumigated the building. Being in church didn't prove to be any safer either!!

BillW@honeywell

Bad IAQ anywhere is our concern!

Mold, CO, odors, pollutant off-gassing, radon and all other IAQ problems are the concern of this entire industry, scorched air or wetheads! In this field, an ounce of prevention is better than a train-load of cure. Schools suffer from budget issues, poor maintenance, vandalism, and politics, and the hvac system is usually the last in line to get anything done with it. There are solutions, but they never seem to make it into the budget! This is a huge problem that is a very thorny one, requiring far more than just our industry to respond to. It needs to start with a sea-change in the political nature of school funding, but that's not an issue for the "Wall".

John R. Hall

So...

...let's talk about what Wallies can do. It's disappointing to see so little feedback on this subject.

seabee570

air quality

I agree with BillW at honeywell...schools do seem to be particularly bad with the quality of indoor air,but as an operating engineer for many years,there are many buildings that suffer from poor IAQ.(indoor Air Quality).Hospitals seem to be ok,yet lots of spaces use 100% outside air.Office buildings are pretty bad,closing off the outside air to minimize heating/cooling costs.lack of maintenance on outside air dampers and controls is the norm.There was only 1 company I worked for that had a preventive maintenance program for IAQ.monthly co readings were taken for about 10 percent of the air handling units,and recorded.This was for a telephone company,22 story building.Many old units.I think the PM program was instituted becase of a lawsuit from a worker who had asthma.

jackchips_2

We really

should be hearing from the engineers, John. They design the systems.

I've been involved in two major school projects (Building Committee) here in my town in Ma. and indoor air quality, in those renovated buildings, has not been a problem.

Both schools, and most in Ma., use unit ventilators that are mounted on outside walls in all the classrooms and supply fresh air directly into each room.

It would also seem that older buildings, with their poor exterior construction would have the opposite problem, to much outside air.

Let's hear from the PE's.

Mark Hunt

Well


for starters, we professionals need to understand how buildings work. Not just the mechanical equipment, but all of the other things that happen to a building.

While we may not always be able to repair every problem we encounter, we should at least be able to recognize them.

I do not want to get into the mold remediation business, but if I see a problem I will tell someone and tell them where to start looking for a mold specialist. Same thing goes for Asbestos.

All too often contractors enter buildings to perform a specific service, and walk past 15 other items that are bigger problems than what they were contracted to fix.

The post regarding a water heater pilot light being blown out after a new fan assisted furnace was installed is a perfect example. The heating contractor had NO IDEA that what they installed would have an effect on another appliance. Cause and effect.

Or how about the customer that remodels a kitchen and has a 1000cfm exhaust hood installed? The contractor that installs it has NO IDEA that when the exhaust hood runs it pulls the combustion products out of every atmospheric appliance in the home. Who would have guessed?

I have seen cases where people were getting sick and the doctors couldn't figure out why. In one case we found that a recent addition was constructed with a dirt floor crawl space under it. The folks fertilized the heck out of their lawn and guess where much of that fertilzer seeped to. Right into the crawl space floor.

How many times have you seen a river running through a basement? Water pouring in through an old foundation?
How many times have you seen old laundry stand pipes that have not had a washing machine in them for years, un-capped and un-plugged? Think that trap is still primed?

You all know what a fanatic I am about CO, but that is not all I look for when I enter a home. After doing home energy audits for the past few years, it dawned on me that what was really needed were home SAFETY audits. Sure saving energy and customers money is a good thing, but if they are sick all the time or DEAD, who cares about how much money I saved them?

Right now the NYS PSC is running ads telling people to lower their water heater temperatures to 120 or less. What do WE know about the potential hazards this can bring?

How many people have had humidifiers installed in their homes to combat dryness in the winter? And in each of those cases the heating system gets blamed, and I have heard EVERY type of system blamed.

It comes down to getting educated about the things that happen in the structures we work in.

Once you get a better understanding of how things work, you look at your specific job differently.

Mark H



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S Ebels

I agree on the engineer part

The people that design these systems need to realize that code is a MINIMUM standard. A lot of the schools around here ar equipped with classroom ventilators. These have dampers which stick, motors that burn out, controls that fail and are controlled by thermostats that don't understand the concept of ventilation and heating at the same time. On top of that, the whole concept of how fresh air supposedly gets into a given building is flawed and in-efficient to begin with IMHO.

Question: You have a sealed box (the building envelope), you want to introduce fresh air into it (the classroom ventilator), How is fresh air introduced into the building without exhausting air already in the building?? Answer: It's not!!

The air that the school (or insert the building of your choice) just paid to heat/cool is being forced out through cracks, gaps, holes and any other opening it can find. No heat is being recovered from the exhaust air.

Why not control incoming and outgoing air along with recovering most of the heat from it with an HRV/ERV?
The answer is money. Your health or the health of your children is not worth the additional investment required to install this type of equipment. As buildings, both commercial and residential, get tighter and tighter the need for Heat Recovery Ventilation equipment becomes more and more apparent.

In the old days of drafty buildings the "blow through" building design worked OK but not anymore. It is downright criminal to waste energy by not recovering the heat first. It is also just as criminal to design a "mold trap" new buuilding and not ventilate it properly.

I'm starting to ramble. Time for my nap

Paul Pollets

IAQ School case study

One of the more interesting cases of "Bad Air" occurred in South Seattle (Highline School District) where several schools were forced to shut down because of chronic illness and respiratory problems with both teachers and students. The school district installed TFP's (Turbulent Flow Precipitator)mfg. by LifeBreath, in each class room and the problems disappeared. Inevitably, I think we'll see requirements for higher quality air filtration as well as air exchange in the next few years.
The case study can be found at:

http://www.lifebreath.com/life.htm

click on "TFP in the Classroom"



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flange

having worked for two of the controls manufacturers, ive seen tons of schools with iaq problems. the latest problem ive encountered is mold. this usually occurs due to low bid energy retrofit projects that instantly "save" the school district energy dollars by installing low quality control systems. most of the jobs out there were designed prior to the energy crunch, and therefore used high amounts of outside air. the instant fix is to install co monitors and drop the amount of outside air from say 35 % to 10 % and monitor the air quality. in the summer months this causes the spaces to cool down to quickly as most dont utilize reheat. this in turn gives you a cold damp space which is great for growing mold. just this past summer i was asked to lok at a certain building that had every square inch of the auditorium covered in mold. this space was a cool 68 degrees "how could it grow in here?" RH was 72 %. seems they cut outside air to 5 % from 40, and when they gave them the new chiller they were running 42 degree water. this chiller was sized from the original load calcs, which were now greatly reduced due to far less outside air. the chiller was also oversized 25 % "just in case". to help even more, they utilized a co sensor which was located in the plenum return for six air handlers.

GMcD

IAQ in Schools and in general

Y'know, the more I read about these horror stories, the more convinced I am of the amateurs posing as professional engineers and designers in the building services industry. I think our engineering and architectural schools should be teaching a "building physics" course load so that any/all professionals and designers who work on new building design and renovations clearly understand how a building works. Right now, we see a situation where everybody is a specialist and can deal with their own little piece of the building, but nobody seems to be the "overall coordinator" or generalist who understands the building physics side of things. Should that be the Architect? I dunno- my pet phrase these days is that mechanical systems were invented and designed to solve poor building envelope designs. I think the HVAC and Building Design industry in North America really needs to pick up it's socks and become more knowledgable about how buildings work.

Keith_5

plenty of blame to go around

when it comes to poor indoor air quality.
Lack of understanding of how each building is outfitted to adress the fresh air requirements.

How many times have you walked into a classroom and seen the Unit vent shut off?
Hot water loop temperatures set back to save energy but not high enough to keep coils from freezing up?
End users complaining about the " cool air blowing" and shutting off the blowers, or worse yet some one goes into the computer and locks out the fresh air dampers for the entire school?
Lack of funding for an adequate staff to keep up with the maintenance?
Poor initial install with a lack of proper commisioning?

All these items, plus increased scrutiny = a terrific opportunity for growth in our chosen field.

When I asked a friend of mine in the Hazardous waste business if he was busy he remarked:
"As long as the laws are enforced I will always be busy" Makes you think doesn't it?

Ex Maine Doug

Unfortunately, as long as the \"public\" keeps

electing the same kind of people to all levels of government, the NO DOLALRS for schools will continue. Sort of like why we, the biggest richest largest SUV's mostest oil consumption biggest armed blah blah blah, country in the world lacks basic health care for everyone. We simply do not want it and funding education, including the buildings, is also not a priority. Damn shame.

It has to be discouraging to go into schools and such and see the state of the mechanicals. More power to ya guys.