Ventilation and IAQ

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Carilion Clinic is a not-for-profit health care organization based in Roanoke, VA. In line with their mission to improve the health of the communities they serve, and with the intent of becoming a teaching facility, Carilion Clinic set upon upgrading their operating rooms and related existing HVAC systems at the Carilion New River Valley Medical Center in Christiansburg, VA.

Anna Jaques Hospital in Newburyport, MA, opened as a small community medical facility in 1884.

As a physician, I say, “Yes.” However, building managers and engineers sometimes answer differently.

What should hospital facilities prioritize — maintaining healthy IAQ or decreasing energy consumption?

If someone is special enough to spend millions of dollars to have a building custom-designed and constructed for their use, it is un-derstandable that they would expect perfection.

A Giant Eagle distributor in Cleveland needed to replace inefficient unit heaters that were used to heat its 61-dock door, 540,700-sq-ft distribution facility.

This month, the focus is on high-performance health care, and so it got me thinking about IAQ and infection control (IC) within hospi-tals.

This past August, I wrote in this column about the opportunity to invest in a niche business providing temporary HVAC design and construction administration.

Mold concerns became highlighted in the 1920s, when commercial and military needs for safe storage and transport of supplies focused attention on preventing biological deterioration of materials.

Most people in the major design and construction business understand that commissioning is a process by which a building’s systems are verified to function properly prior to acceptance by the owner.