Indoor air quality is becoming more and more important for people. The construction industry is recognising the importance of the good air quality and has introduced many measures to improve the air inside newly constructed buildings. Because we spend more than 80 percent of our time indoors the exposure to various contaminants can have significant effect on our health. The UK industry has introduces several wellbeing schemes to improve the standards of living and working in modern buildings. The most popular schemes are the Breeam and SKA schemes but there is also a LEED scheme which is mainly used in the United States. All these schemes have many aspects and indoor air quality is usually just one small part of them. Nevertheless it is an important part having significant impact on long-term wellbeing of the building occupants.
In this project I have been appointed to evaluate the indoor air quality in accordance with Breeam scheme requirements. The Breeam scheme specified particulars and condition of the testing which have to be followed to obtain the right results. The testing is done in habitable room of each development in rooms such as meeting rooms, offices, bedrooms or classroom, simply rooms where people spend significant proportion of day and thus air quality is important. The Breeam scheme does not require testing in room such as corridor or storeroom for obvious reasons.
In this project and newly build sport training facility has been build in the north of the country. The facility has constructed to the highest standard and consisted of several training rooms, gymnasium, and classroom and sport injury training rooms. The assessment has been carried out in representative sample of the relevant room.
Although rooms such as corridors, storerooms, changing rooms are not subjected to the Breeam testing requirements nevertheless they might have a significant effect on the overall indoor air quality. This is mainly due to the that certain specific more durable materials are used in these areas frequently constructed from various polymers and sealed or glued to the floor by adhesives and silicones. Care must therefore be taken when assessing facilities with large expanses of these materials.
As I mentioned earlier this sports facility has been constructed to the highest standards with great care to be taken in regards to the quality of work and material used. The results of the assessment showed that the concentration of contaminants in both categories was below 45µg (micro grams) which is very low. The construction company was able easily obtain the required Breeam points for this assessment.
By Tomas Gabor