Before 2020, many people used to enjoy being sealed in tight against the cold in their homes during the winter, but global lockdowns made us reconsider how much we love staying in. Another thing the pandemic made us think about is how to increase the quality of time spent indoors. While it turned into organizing comfortable workstations and home offices for many of us, others were thinking about the aspects of life that are taken for granted in an everyday context, like air quality. It attracted even more attention when the question of virus transmission through the air was still unanswered. Today, we’re clearing the air around Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) for senior, healthcare, educational, and other types of facilities.
Why IAQ Matters
While we all need clean air, IAQ is especially significant for people who are sensitive to indoor allergens or have respiratory problems, specifically in winter. The problem is that stale air and faulty ventilation and heating systems can increase the amount of allergy-inducing dust mites, pet dander, and mould spores circulating through the facility. Since there’s not enough flow of fresh air during cold months, allergens stay trapped inside and can cause asthma flare-ups, fatigue, sleepiness, and other unpleasant symptoms. Another thing to keep in mind is that most of the allergy and respiratory triggers don’t have any smell, so it may be hard to find the roots of the problem. Later, when days get warmer, it’s vital to ensure the proper work of air conditioning systems to minimize the number of allergens and dust from the outside.
How to Keep IAQ Standards High for Facilities
Improving IAQ can help you minimize asthma flare-ups and allergy symptoms and keep your facility safe throughout the year. While you can’t simply eliminate all possible allergens inside your building, you can decrease the number – and your residents’ and visitors’ exposure to them – by making basic changes.
Keep it clean
Cleaning has always been a top priority for many businesses, especially in senior care and hospitality. Now, “clean” is one of the key topics since people are concerned about their health more than ever. A clean facility is a healthy facility, and to provide your residents with the safety they deserve, make sure you do your best to support excellent indoor hygiene. Apart from vacuuming the carpets and area rugs, channel your team efforts into cleaning drapes and furniture that might attract dust, mould, and allergens, especially if pets are allowed. A pro tip is always clearing clutter since it traps and holds dust.
It seems easy if you apply these tips to your own house, but when it comes to managing a facility, it turns into a demanding and time-sensitive challenge. With Maintenance Care CMMS, you can rely on the newest DetSet feature that allows you to create specific sets of sub-tasks and fields for all maintenance and housekeeping tasks. This feature makes monitoring housekeeping tasks, like cleaning and sanitization, simpler and more convenient.
Change the filters
Be sure to change filters regularly because they’re the last barrier preventing mould, allergens, and respiratory triggers from recirculating throughout the facility. It’s hard to keep track of everything, and as a facility manager, you can’t always rely on your maintenance team since there may be new hires, and it’s difficult to keep them updated when there’s no centralized system in place. What you can do to ensure that filters are taken care of is leveraging CMMS that offers the Preventative Maintenance feature so that you can create a list of tasks, set reminders, and forget about it – the system will do the rest. 
Summing up, when it comes to the air quality inside your facility, heating, ventilating, and air conditioning system (HVAC) plays a great role. Some actionable items include making sure all preventative maintenance tasks are scheduled accordingly and keeping track of housekeeping tasks. CMMS is the best tool if you want to outsource the responsibility and memory capacity. Contact the Maintenance Care team today to find out how our CMMS can improve IAQ inside your facility and more! 
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