Efficiency


Air Quality & Ventilation Feature


What is IAQ and how do we measure it?


Vince House of Aereco explores what indoor air quality (IAQ) really means as residents are confined to their homes more than ever.


being Carbon dioxide (CO2 T


here has been a lot of talk around Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), especially during the pandemic, but what does IAQ really mean? There are various pollutants in the air which will contribute to poor IAQ, one of those ). Recorded levels above 1000 parts per million


(ppm) inside properties can be associated with deteriorating air quality, so it seems like a good measure to focus on. What is interesting is when we monitor CO2


right circumstances using moisture as a proxy to CO2 measuring CO2


and moisture together, they rise


and fall at almost the same rate. This stands to reason as generally where there is a human there is also CO2


and moisture caused by breathing. As a result, in the can be just as effective as


itself. While also providing the benefit of measuring moisture


too, this is often not the case in reverse. There are of course other things we can measure. Total Volatile Organic Compounds – or TVOC’s – are becoming more well–known now, and can have


Ventilation often gets overlooked by landlords and housing professionals when other home improvement measures are being installed


a damaging effect on our internal environment. VOC’s are gasses which emanate from all sorts of things in our homes, furniture, toys, deodorants, paints, aerosols, cleaning products, etc. The list is exhaustive. There’s also Radon gases in parts of the country, NO2 and PM10, 2.5, 1’s and below (of which there is still extensive research being carried out to understand the effects).


30 | HMM December/January 2021 | www.housingmmonline.co.uk


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