SE CONTROLS 2014 SPONSORED FEATURE

Classroom Air Quality

Air Quality
Mon 06/01/14 15.45
24.3˚C 25%RH
CO2 - 727ppm
OPEN CLOSE

Are students being let down?

By Dr Chris Iddon,
Environment Design Manager
at SE Controls.

The link between classroom air quality, attentiveness and pupil performance is not
a new phenomenon and was publicly recognised in the mid 1870s by architect
Edward Robert Robson in his book School Architecture, stating: “…much of the
restlessness, inattention and apparent stupidity, often observable among the
children, is due more to want of freshness in the air than to dullness in the scholar.” OPEN
CO2 - 727ppm
24.3˚C 25%RH
CLOSE

Mon 01/01/13 15.45

Air Quality

During the intervening 140 years, a Control is key
considerable amount has changed in the The logical way of addressing this issue is to
education system including the design of automatically control the opening and closing of
school buildings, which have left behind windows or the operation of other ventilation
the Victorian ideals of high ceilings, porous systems such as mixed mode natural ventilation
brick construction and inherent air leakage solutions, which are driven by the levels of CO2
and replaced them with energy efficient, present in an individual classroom.
well-insulated structures with low ceilings. Clearly, CO2 monitoring has to form part of this
One of the few features to have survived process, to comply with the BB101 guidelines for
this transition is the presence of windows. school air quality, which stipulates key limits for
Apart from providing natural daylight, average occupied and maximum CO2 levels of
windows also perform the other key task of 1500ppm and 5000ppm respectively.
often being the only source of classroom
However, passive monitoring alone is not enough.
ventilation, particularly for schools
Even using traffic lights or sounders to alert teachers
built until the end of the 20th Century.
to open windows has proven to be insufficient to
And this is where the issues begin. maintain adequate ventilation. These options were
As a source of ventilation, or to be more evaluated as part of a series of studies conducted by
specific, as a method of controlling the levels SE Controls in schools across the UK.
of carbon dioxide (CO2) and temperature Also, the occupied averaging methodology has to be
in a classroom, windows can only perform robust and relevant to the actual situation in the
this task effectively if they’re open. classroom. Merely taking an average reading over a
rolling 8 hour period provides a skewed response as
However, if they’re open too far or too long
in the morning it would include long periods where
temperatures can drop to uncomfortable
the building is unoccupied.
levels and incur additional heating costs.
Conversely, keeping them closed or Meeting school ventilation needs
not opening them enough will result Integrating accurate CO2, temperature and relative
in poor indoor air quality with high
humidity monitoring together with industry
CO2 and the likely presence of other
standard control signal outputs, data logging,
airborne contaminants and pathogens.
networking capability with integral GUI and an
advanced control algorithm, developed in
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conjunction with Loughborough University’s
5000
CO2 Concentration ppm
Currently this study is being implemented
nationwide to build a greater data bank, which
can be fed into future ventilation product and
systems designs.
Since its introduction, NVLogiQ driven systems
have been installed in a number of schools including
legacy buildings and new build structures with both
natural ventilation and mixed mode ventilation
solutions. Using intelligent sampling, which
automatically increases the monitoring frequency as
CO2 levels change, this has enabled highly accurate
control to be achieved. As part of a well-designed
ventilation strategy, NVLogiQ has been successfully
employed to deliver good IAQ and thermal comfort
through intelligent control.
Building an ideal learning environment
Research academics, ventilation systems companies,
consulting engineers and industry bodies such as
CIBSE all recognise that there is
an issue with poor classroom IAQ, which has
now been supported by our own independent school
IAQ studies. Yet it’s arguable that the education
profession, parents and certainly the pupils
themselves are still largely unaware that many of
their schools fall short of meeting the
IAQ standards.
With NVLogiQ, and other technologies, effective
solutions are already available, yet the big question is,
how will the education and political inertia be
overcome to ensure schools can begin to deliver the
IAQ that is essential for an effective and stimulating
learning environment?

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Building Energy Research Group, was the brief

Temperature °C

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4000

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behind the development of SE Controls’ compact
3000
5 NVLogiQ room controller, which was launched in
2000 0 late 2012.
1000
-5
Even before NVLogiQ was launched, it was being See the time lapse video
-10

used in school classrooms to determine the ‘real of IAQ in a manually

controlled classroom:
0 -15

world’ education environment present in a number

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CO2 ppm 1000 ppm 1500 ppm 5000 ppm Average Occupied
CO2 ppm
External
Temp °C
Internal
Temp °C
of different types of schools and the levels of CO2 http://www.secontrols.com/tv/ video/classroom-iaq-time-lapse

present to provide a picture of typical indoor video/classroom-iaq-time-lapse

Daily trace of classroom CO2 levels under air quality.
NVLogiQ control.

www.secontrols.com SE Controls +44(0) 1543 443060