Comment by mherdeg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mherdeg | Hacker News Reader

My town's school system is all in on healthy buildings -- they got parent MD/PhDs to read the literature and invite outside experts to advise, then they set minimum air change per hour and minimum filtration criteria (something like, classrooms may reopen iff they have 5 air changes per hour with outdoor or MERV 13+ filtered air). They did a bunch of HVAC work to support this goal and have reopened okay.

The town's other public buildings as far as I can have ignored this and I think the libraries are just gonna reopen and hope for the best.

Advocates of healthy buildings have been telling us about the risks of low airflow (focusing mostly on cognitive effects of high CO2 vs the disease impacts). It sucks but the pandemic is their once in a generation opportunity to push change in indoor air quality -- I hope some of it sticks.

> the pandemic is their once in a generation opportunity to push change in indoor air quality

in the recent years many offices, especially new and deeply remodeled got "green" certified, and decreased ventilation flow has been among the ways to achieve the energy saving for the certification. I don't hope they would turn the ventilation/AC back on to good levels - instead i think there would spring a cottage industry of "virus filters" to be installed on top of those "green" systems.

Additionally these new/remodeled offices have those hip open ceilings with no noise blocking what classic office ceiling provided - as a result any meaningful flow increase causes very uncomfortable low frequency noise from those uncovered ventilation ducts.

I've seen the opposite problem. My apartment which just completed construction at the end of 2020 is very insulated, but has very aggressive air exchange through the HVAC system to compensate. My poor humidifier can't keep up, so the indoor air humidity is at the mercy of whatever the dew point is outside. It was consistently below 10% throughout February. I wonder which situation is worse for your health.

Agree

You don't need the WHO or some higher authority to tell you opening windows or circulating more air during a pandemic is a good idea.

Or you know, winter. As has been the case for at least the past few hundred thousand years.

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