A nursery school’s “good robots’
The challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic were born by schools in an exceptional way. Across the nation both public and independent school administrators struggled to balance the need for in-person education with occupant safety. Navigreen Engineering was pleased to provide guidance to the Haytown Nursery School to increase indoor air quality (IAQ) for the health of its students and staff.
While there are a multitude of new technologies aimed at combating the novel coronavirus, the team at Navigreen determined that limited options were available to the school given the absence of a centralized heating or cooling system. With no mechanical ventilation systems present, the option to increase classroom outdoor air ventilation by opening windows alone would have had detrimental side effects to student and staff comfort during the cold winter months of 2020 in northern New Jersey.
Based on the existing site conditions, Navigreen provided recommendations for appropriately sized portable air purifiers utilizing high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filtration, capable of capturing 99.97% of particles equivalent in size to the novel coronavirus, for each occupied space within the school. Additionally, the units purchased provide further air sanitization through plasma ionization technology, which neutralizes viruses in the air and makes them more readily captured by the HEPA filter.
These “good robots”, as they were described to the students, will also serve double-duty when COVID-19 is only a memory, as they will combat allergens and flu viruses as well.