Ventilation

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Types of ventilation

Omni's ventilation involves 4 types, most on timers that turn them on at 7am and off around midnight, seven days a week:

Active Roof exhaust fans in ballroom (2x fans) & entrance hall (3x fans)

These five exhaust fans exhaust air from the whole building, not just from the rooms they are in. They create a slight negative pressure throughout omni that draws in air from adjacent spaces.

For the ballroom, usually only one of the two exhaust fans is left set on the 7am-midnite schedule -- unless there is an event, in which case both exhaust fans definitely should be on.


Active Intake air fan drawing outside air from roof down into basement

This fresh air provided to basement, is in turn drawn up into the rest of the building by the negative pressure created by the roof exhaust fans and thermals (as basement is typically colder than the rest of the building).

This fresh air circulates up through ballroom & entrance hall, and to a lesser extent into Sudo/CCL. Therefore this fan also serves most of Omni.


Active Recirculated MERV-13 filtered air (w/o heat) pushed by individual furnaces to ballroom, entrance hall, basement & disco

At present, heat will only turn on if engaged manually at the thermostat. Otherwise, these furnace fans just recirculate unheated air through their filters, which are accepted ~85% effective at mitigating COVID (yes I'm simplifying here I realize, but). This filtered air might be thought of as '85%' fresh air. They also remove pollution particulates from the air which is crucial for a healthy space on 'bad air' days / during fire season.


Passive Natural ventilation afforded by operable windows in ballroom, entrance hall, & disco (when windows are opened)

How we should ideally interact with Omni's fans & ventilation

For adequate air changes per hour throughout omni, it is important that all fans be left as-is (on during working hours) 99% of the time, and not manually turned off.

I.E., if the ballroom is empty, but people are working elsewhere in the building, at least one ballroom exhaust fan still needs to be left on its usual schedule -- since manually turning off both ballroom roof exhaust fans doesn't just affect those in the ballroom, it affects air balance in the whole building.

Also, if an exhaust fan is manually turned off, it won't automatically come back on per the timer schedule. The fan has to be turned back on for it to be subject to the timer schedule.

The only reason to turn off a fan is if there is a problem with a fan. For example, the ballroom's east exhaust fan just had its belt replaced this week, and while it is less noisy, it is still pretty noisy. Therefore, it is off unless there is a loud event, until it can be looked at by an HVAC professional.