Healthier buildings and healthier people through indoor air management for property stock: Folkhälsan, Freesi and Digita paving the way
Published: 4.5.2020
In Finland, the annual costs of problems with indoor air amount to approximately three billion euros through sick leaves and treatment costs, and such problems occur with 15% of the property stock. Regarding predisposal to allergy and asthma diseases, it has been estimated that even as many as 75% of the cases are related to indoor environments.
“Problems with indoor air do not occur by chance or because of bad luck. With the right methods, risky conditions can be detected early and problems prevented,” says Jan-Kristian Westerlund, Head of Sales and Marketing at IISY.
Freesi indoor air service helps property owners manage the indoor air quality of property stock
Freesi indoor air service was developed by IISY’s digital engineering office specialised in indoor air and it helps the owners of large property stock manage indoor air and prevent the related risks. Freesi indoor air service utilises Digita-provided measuring instruments connected to a LoRaWAN network. More than 1,000,000 square metres of property stock with high indoor air quality standards are currently under constant monitoring by Freesi indoor air service: commercial property, offices, agencies, schools and day care centres, hospitals, health centres, care facilities and large apartment buildings.
“There is a large number of parties offering data collection in the indoor air market. However, Freesi indoor air service has introduced completely new possibilities for managing indoor air: data is no longer merely collected but analysed and risks identified, which enables the prevention of indoor air problems. For the first time, there are clear, permanent indicators for managing indoor air,” Westerlund says.
According to Westerlund, indoor conditions have been typically measured through spot checks in a reactive manner. With Freesi indoor air service, customers can now obtain, as a continuous service, an overview of the situation where the measurement data for indoor air conditions can also be combined with information on experiences obtained through user surveys.
“Freesi enables us to monitor buildings throughout their entire life cycle and identify and prevent risks for which building automation, control rooms and other data platforms lack the sufficient capability. Freesi boosts the operations of the customers’ systems and is a seamless part of property management processes. As a scalable service, Freesi is especially suitable for large property stocks,” Westerlund says.
Folkhälsan is the pioneer in the prevention of indoor air problems
Folkhälsan is an excellent example of the utilisation of Freesi indoor air services.
Folkhälsan has its own real estate organisation, which invests in particular in the development of operations complying with the new electronic reporting system for real estate management, with the aim of creating good living conditions and user comfort. A good microclimate promotes the well-being and comfort of the building’s users. Freesi indoor air services have provided an excellent tool for monitoring microclimates.
“We can monitor the quality of indoor air in real-time and react to any deviations immediately. Temperature, relative humidity, carbon dioxide concentrations, TVOCs and pressure differences are measured separately for each space. Monitoring the pressure ratios of the premises across the outer shell is extremely important for the building. Uncontrolled pressure differences may cause structural problems and problems with indoor air. Reports are easy to read and analyse. The observations of the Freesi control room, which are recorded in an event log, are also a big plus,” says Dan Brander, Real Estate Manager at Folkhälsan.
Digita’s IoT solutions are the foundation for IISY’s services
Digita has been the supplier for the Freesi service’s measurement solutions for indoor conditions since spring 2019. The measurement devices connected to the modern LoRaWAN network provided by Digita enable the collection of diverse data of high-quality, for example, on air humidity, temperature, carbon dioxide levels, Total Volatile Organic Compounds (TVOCs), fine particles and the pressure ratios of the building’s indoor and outdoor air.
“As an engineering office, we prepare comprehensive analyses of indoor air quality, which is why the reliability of measurement data is naturally crucially important. The battery life of the measuring devices is another important factor, as we want to serve our customers in the long term: when it can be guaranteed that batteries need to be changed only every 5 to 8 years, this will result in significant cost savings over time. As a partner, Digita has proven to be not only reliable but also outstandingly flexible regarding both the extension of the LoRaWAN network coverage and the purchasing of measuring sensors,” Westerlund concludes.