Making schools more resilient through classroom ventilation

School administrators were looking for ways to ensure that the restoration of in-person instruction happened as securely as possible as schools got ready for it. The HVAC system must be supplying the right volume of outside air to guarantee that classrooms are healthy and have the best ventilation possible. These systems frequently haven't been examined by an HVAC expert in decades. Facilities employees may be contacted periodically throughout the years to replace out the air filters or fix minor air-conditioning problems, but setting the outside air is often only done when the building is originally built. Today, several agencies, including the CDC and the WHO, frequently use HVAC jargon when speaking about ASHRAE ventilation tables, outdoor air, and air changes per hour. To ensure your facility is operating as it should when dealing with something you can't see—air—you need an expert in the field with the necessary tools and knowledge.

Studies of classroom ventilation

Because we at NWESI understand how crucial a properly working HVAC system is, we examined our office systems in April 2020. Midway through 2020, healthcare facilities also launched this initiative. Many educational institutions are now making an effort as they try to get students to come back. And it's fortunate that they are because there is generally a lot of potential for growth when we visit these institutions.


We've been busy this summer working with a school district in Oregon that is now examining the outdoor air intake for each campus. The goal is to increase ventilation in the classroom and school to lower the risk of COVID-19 transmission between personnel and students. See the Resources section below for more information on the rules that these districts are adhering to.

I will always be grateful to the medical professionals, nurses, support staff, and educators who are fighting this pandemic on the front lines. I hope they are aware that many of us engineers are working diligently behind the scenes to improve ventilation and lessen the spread of COVID-19 in an effort to make their duties a little simpler.

Area of the district-wide ventilation survey

For a school district with 350 different HVAC systems spread across 36 buildings with a combined square footage of 2.8 million, NWESI performed facility tune-ups and ventilation inspections. Let's examine what the overall structure of this project was.


HVAC system commissioning for good indoor air quality:

Role of ventilation and exterior air controls
Examine equipment schedules and occupancy information. SOO
Suggestions for modifications and improvements
TAB scope for a few locations included:

determining and modifying the minimal outside air intake
airflows are changed to address ventilation and air quality issues.

finding older ventilation problems

The work we do to improve the airflow in the classroom frequently leads to the discovery and resolution of other HVAC problems. As an illustration, one of our main objectives was to modify the airflow in the schools in order to lower the danger of COVID-19 transmission. But after that, we discovered further concerns, such serious internal air conditioning problems. In these situations, we offer a report that pinpoints the underlying reason for the system's flaws so that employees and site facilities staff can fix them. The awareness that the system issue is not simply a comfort issue but also a health danger due to the epidemic gives building managers more influence.


Another illustration is when we went to a school where we had previously worked and had a solid foundational report from the early 2000s. We could clearly see what had changed over the years because we understood exactly how everything had been put up back then. We ended up taking a long time to configure the terminal units' airflow coefficients. Strangely, only half of the flow coefficients were slightly to drastically different from the previous balance from 20 years prior. I believed that my work will significantly improve the comfort and health of elementary school students and their teachers.

I will always be grateful to the medical professionals, nurses, support staff, and educators who are fighting this pandemic on the front lines. I hope they are aware that many of us engineers are working diligently behind the scenes to improve ventilation and lessen the spread of COVID-19 in an effort to make their duties a little simpler.