Reply to Howard County remote until April 2021.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For anyone who is reading this and who has watched the Howard County BOE meetings, I have a question. The old board members and now the new ones regularly ask about the HVAV and ventilation issues. Each time they do, district staff launch into a long explanation about upgraded filters and other things that I don't understand because I'm not an expert in HVAC.

What exactly do the Board members and/or unions want to happen with the HVAC? Is there something specific they want done that has not been addressed?  [/quote]

Viruses are particularly small and you need to have air filters that are designed to catch smaller particles in order to help ensure that there is as little transmission of Covid-19 as possible.  You need to have filters with a MERV rating of at least 13 to catch particles as small as viruses.  Standard systems use MERV-8 or MERV-10 filters which are less likely to stop the HVAC from blowing the viruses from one area to another.

Additionnally, it helps to have as many separate HVAC units as possible with the different units not sharing ventilation.  This means that you can have one HVAC unit group each group of rooms and the air that is circulated in one unit vents outside (and draws in air from outside) separate from the other units.  Some buildings are designed with different units sharing an air source.  If that exists, it is easier for virus particles from one part of the school to get drawn back into the system and blow out to another set of rooms, which only increases the chance the someone who is contagious in one part of the school can transmit it to other parts of the school.  Older buildings are more likely to have ventillation shared across multiple sections.  In those situations, you can sometimes separate the sections with a minimal amount of duct work providing that you have separate ventillation units.

In any event, the BoE asked and was assured that at a minimum, all of the schools have had filters upgraded to higher rated MERV factor filters.  That's the minimum that needs to be done and it is a relatively low-cost upgrade that can be done.  Filters usually have to be replaced regularly anyways, so replacing filters slightly earlier and upgradiing them to higher rated filters is a pretty low cost maintenance upgrade that will help a lot. [/quote]

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