Indoor air quality (IAQ) plays a vital role in the operation of your commercial business. It’s as important as maintaining proper indoor temperatures, but people often don’t realize it.
If you haven’t given much consideration to the indoor air quality of your commercial facility, we strongly advise you to give some thought to it. Below we’ve listed five factors about commercial indoor air quality that we think you need to know.
1. Poor Commercial Indoor Air Quality Is a Common Problem
You might think that poor air quality isn’t something that most commercial buildings have to deal with. Unfortunately, the air inside buildings is often four to five times worse than the air outside, the opposite of what most people expect. The EPA has determined that poor IAQ is a major health concern, and commercial buildings have a high amount of indoor pollutants that can easily become trapped indoors and create low IAQ.
2. Poor IAQ Creates Immediate Health Issues
You can read some scary statistics about the long-term health effects of poor IAQ. But there are immediate effects as well that can create problems for your business. Poor indoor air quality leads to headaches, nausea, asthma, and flu-like symptoms, sometimes creating “sick building syndrome.” This can mean a drop in productivity among employees and customers/clients who don’t want to spend much time in your facility.
3. HVAC Maintenance Is an Important Part of IAQ
There are many reasons to always stay current with maintenance for the heating, air conditioning, and ventilation system in your commercial property. You might not have realized that IAQ is one of them. It’s difficult for a dusty and dirty HVAC system to keep the air in the building clean.
Clogged air filters also lead to serious IAQ problems. Poorly maintained ACs will create higher humidity indoors, which is an IAQ problem all on its own. When you have your HVAC equipment maintained on a regular schedule, you’ll conquer many basic indoor air quality concerns.
4. Proper Ventilation Is Essential for Quality IAQ
One of the basic ways to improve indoor air quality for a commercial building is to ensure proper ventilation. A common issue in commercial facilities is negative air pressure: this is when too much air is vented from the building but not enough is vented back in.
Poor ventilation also means numerous contaminants getting trapped inside the facility and continuing to circulate through the HVAC system. Your commercial space may need upgrades, retrofits, and replacements to your property’s ventilation in order to combat IAQ issues.
5. Humidity Control Is Part of Better IAQ
We mentioned above how a lack of maintenance for an air conditioning system can lead to increased indoor humidity. Imbalanced humidity in general is a major IAQ problem. It not only affects the comfort and health of people inside the facility, but it can also cause damage to electronic equipment, promote mold growth, and cause a steep rise in energy usage.
When you’re ready to improve your commercial indoor air quality in Whittier, CA or elsewhere in Southern California, reach out to the team at Greenleaf.