Indoor air quality

Leading British ventilation manufacturer Vent-Axia is supporting Clean Air Day on Thursday 15 June 2023 and welcomes the theme “Clean up our air to look after your mind this #CleanAirDay”. Clean Air Day is led by environmental charity Global Action Plan and is the UK’s largest campaign on air pollution. It aims to improve public understanding of air pollution, build awareness of how air pollution affects our health, and explain the easy actions we can all take to tackle air pollution, helping protect the environment and our health.

With Monday 5th June being World Environment Day, the focus will rightly be on how we preserve our planet’s fragile environment.

But never forget that other special mini-environment - the one within our homes.

Improving and managing air quality, both for new-builds and existing dwellings, will be a major priority as the EPC regulations change up to 2030.
 
Advice published by NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, urges authorities to ‘embed a plan for improving indoor air quality in an existing strategy or plan to improve people’s health.’ It adds that ‘the emphasis should be a balanced approach to ventilation, insulation and heating to achieve it.’
 
The BRE Trust, an independent charity dedicated to improving the built environment, goes further. It estimates that poor housing is costing the NHS £1.4billion a year to treat those affected.

So what are the main problems that need to be overcome and the latest high-tech solutions that could help?

VORTICE has launched a new Positive Input Ventilation System (PIV) in both loft and wall versions to help eradicate the issue of mould in the home.   We spend more than 90% of our time indoors and unless we take steps to ventilate our homes correctly, the quality of the air we breathe can be 50 times more polluted than outdoor air, with all the associated health risks. Why is that? We are sealing up our homes and when you contemplate the number of cleaning products, hair sprays, paints, air fresheners, new furniture and carpets that we bring into our home, you’ll realise what we’re feeding into our indoor air. One of the main issues is the rise of humidity, encouraging the presence of condensation, mould and dust mites in the home and if not treated properly can cause or increase health risks such as breathing issues or skin allergies.

Ventilation industry leader Vent-Axia is celebrating Global Recycling Day, which takes place on 18 March 2023, by showing its commitment to expanding its range of recycled plastic ventilation products and meeting its environmental targets. Vent-Axia is leading the way in the ventilation sector with a market transformation to manufacturing from recycled material to improve indoor air sustainably. This includes its award-winning Lo-Carbon Multivent MEV range which literally broke the mould as the first MEV to be made from recycled plastic. This has now expanded to a wide range of products including its Positive Input Ventilation (PIV) units and Mixed Flow In-Line fans, helping customers in a wider range of sectors make more sustainable choices.

Vent-Axia, the leader in low carbon ventilation, has launched its Net Zero Retrofit Solution to help social housing providers meet carbon targets. The range has been specifically developed to provide increased ventilation whilst minimising unnecessary heat loss through heat recovery technology. The UK is committed to meet Net Zero targets by 2050. This sets a tough challenge for social housing providers to improve their energy efficiency and so lower the carbon emissions in their properties, without detrimentally affecting the indoor air quality (IAQ) in their homes. Increasing airtightness in homes to improve energy efficiency can create areas where moisture condenses, leading to mould growth which blights many homes across the UK.

Titon’s FireSafe® Air Brick has recently been installed at the new Hayes Village development in West London.
Hayes Village, situated at Nestles Avenue, Hayes in Middlesex, is a brand new development from Barratt London offering 1,473 new homes.  Built on the former Nestle Factory, the area is undergoing signification regeneration.

With the topic of air quality gaining in importance for end users and landlords, SIEGENIA’s compact single room heat recovery ventilation unit can now provide an even healthier indoor environment as it is available with CO2 regulation on request.

Ventilation remains an ongoing challenge not just for private developers and self-builders, but also for those of us undertaking any refurbishment works on properties. With increasing airtightness standards in the UK for new build homes and the focus on procuring the most energy efficient products, we end up creating nothing more than highly efficient sealed boxes. This may sound ideal (and from an energy conservation point of view it is) but without a properly considered holistic ventilation strategy, poor indoor air quality and issues of condensation and mould will ensue and become a recurrent problem for housing managers and landlords.