Ductwork & ductwork cleaning
www.heatingandventilating.net TR19 Air – winds of change
In 2024, the eagerly anticipated TR19 Air was published by the BESA, representing an advance in the professional cleaning of ventilation systems. Gary Nicholls, managing director of Swiftclean and co-author of both TR19 Air and TR19 Grease, reflects on the introduction of this new specification
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n the UK, we have gradually revised and refined the advice documents which govern best practice in ventilation ductwork hygiene. The introduction of industry guidance, first with TR17, then with TR19, gradually helped to raise
awareness of the importance of ventilation hygiene and its effect on indoor air quality (IAQ). This was a very positive step, as, up to that point, ventilation hygiene and
IAQ were largely dependent on the diligence and savvy of individual building managers. Some understood the importance of cleaning ventilation systems and maintained them scrupulously; others neglected them woefully. In days past, newly installed ventilation systems were often pressed into use without being properly cleaned and commissioned. Thanks to the various versions of TR19, which provided sound industry guidance on cleaning and maintaining ventilation systems, those days have gone. TR19 Air has now taken us a significant step forward, transitioning from leading industry guidance to a specification, with which everyone should now comply.
Ductwork must be cleaned regularly, in order to ensure that accumulated deposits of airborne pollutants such as bacteria, dust, or volatile organic compounds, on the inner surfaces do not pollute the incoming air. With its new status as a specification, TR19 Air is helping to increase
awareness of the importance of clean ductwork in maintaining a safe, healthy, and compliant building. Significantly, it spells out the need to ensure that the
Above: Gary Nicholls, managing director of Swiftclean UK
system includes sufficient access to allow regular cleaning to be carried out. As with its predecessors, TR19 Air requires ventilation systems to be classified as high, medium and low, depending on their usage and the areas that they serve. This classification affects the regularity of cleaning, and TR19 Air contains helpful tables, giving intervals for cleaning each classification. TR19 Air includes two key changes to its predecessor TR19. The first is a new emphasis on the inspection and testing of the cleanliness of the ductwork, a move which we hope will help to move ductwork hygiene further up the list of priorities for the facilities manager. The second is specific advice about access, especially at the design, construction and installation stages. This latter is to be warmly welcomed. We have, in the past, seen far too many systems which needed to be retrofitted with additional access points at their first clean; as well as others which could not be thoroughly cleaned throughout their entire length due to access problems. In order to achieve and maintain compliance with TR19 Air, access is vital.
This may sound obvious, but, in the past, systems have not always incorporated sufficient access points, especially around turns in the ductwork, or close to the point of installation of a fire damper. TR19 Air strongly recommends that there are access points no more than one metre from each side of a fire damper – roughly the equivalent of an arm’s length – to ensure that function testing and cleaning can be competently carried out. In some stretches, operatives will actually enter the ductwork in order to clean it, so the need for technicians to be able to enter and exit in safety is also outlined in TR19 Air. Additional access hatches can be retrofitted later, but this is inevitably more
expensive and potentially more difficult than installing them from the outset. Ductwork may be twin walled and contain insulation materials in some sections, and FMs rarely have details of where these stretches are. TR19 Air also warns against installing utilities such as gas pipes, water pipes or electric cables, in such a way that they cause an obstruction and prevent the use of access hatches.
If cleaning and testing is carried out by a member of the BESCA Vent
Hygiene Register they can provide post-clean certification which demonstrates compliance, forming valuable legal protection against any accusation of negligence. Hopefully, we are now entering a phase of positive retrofitting of access doors to bring neglected older systems into compliance with TR19 Air. New systems will, we hope, be designed with future compliance in mind. That way, TR19® Air, which the BESA has billed as a revolution in indoor air quality, will indeed herald a healthier future for all our buildings.
14 February 2025
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