Heat Pump Awareness Grows from Residential, Commercial Customers | 2022-02-14 | ACHR News

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A project to deploy 40 air quality sensors and particulate air (Hepa) filters at local businesses, community hubs and qualifying households in East Boston is the recipient of the City of Boston’s second round of funding in its Community Clean Air Grant programme.

 

The Neighbourhood of Affordable Housing (Noah) project receives $50,000 and will also use plants to raise awareness of the project and to help educate the community about the relative impact of plants and Hepa filters on indoor air quality.

 

Covid-19 recovery

 

The grant programme is a part of Boston’s equitable and sustainable recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. The funding gives Boston residents and organisations the resources and tools to carry out community-driven projects that reduce emissions and bring short-term benefits to our neighbourhoods.

 

“With the funding from the City of Boston’s Community Clean Air grant, ‘B-Eastie Air conditions’ will measure air quality for families, schools, and frequented businesses in East Boston, and deploy Hepa air filters to clean their air,” said Phil Giffee, executive director of Noah.

 

“Our project will focus on both residents with asthma and racially diverse socio-economically stressed residents.”

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BROOKLYN, N.Y., Feb. 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Indoor air quality is often ranked by experts as a top environmental and health risk concern, and the professionals at Petri Plumbing & Heating, Inc., a family-owned home service company serving Brooklyn and Manhattan for more than 100 years, say that homeowners should strive to maintain good ventilation when their homes are closed up during the winter months.

“Now that we’re in the final weeks of winter, most homeowners have had their homes closed up for months and the air quality is probably suffering,” said Michael Petri, owner of Petri Plumbing & Heating. “You may have noticed a musty odor or maybe you’re sneezing more. This can be due to poor indoor air quality. Luckily, there are some inexpensive things homeowners can do to improve the air they’re breathing.”

Petri suggested that homeowners follow these tips to breathe easier:

1.  Purchase an air purifier. Homeowners can opt to buy a portable model or consult with a professional to install a whole-home purifier. These work by trapping the offending particles and filtering and sanitizing the air before blowing it back into the room.

2.  Set out house plants. Plants consume the carbon dioxide that humans breath out and replace it with the oxygen humans breath in. Be careful, however, not to overwater plants because they can develop mold, which can cause other air quality issues.

3.  Crack a window. Not every winter day is freezing, so homeowners should keep an eye on the weather and try opening a window on days when the weather is a bit warmer and when the pollution level outside is at a lower level. Circulating outdoor air through the home can wipe away pollutants and other irritants.

4.  Change the air filters on the heating system regularly. Not only will this reduce pollutants in the air, it will keep the home’s HVAC or other heating system running smoothly.

5.  Maintain proper humidity levels. Humidity levels that are too high or too low can affect both overall health and comfort levels. Homeowners should try to maintain an indoor humidity level between 30-50%. If the indoor relative humidity goes above 60%, mold and mildew can begin to form. If the humidity level is too low, a whole-home humidifier can help add moisture to the air, while a dehumidifier or even some well-placed Boston ferns can help decrease the moisture level in a home with high humidity.

“COVID-19 has been on everyone’s mind for the past two years, and as a result, the health effects of poor air quality in general have become frequent topics of conservation,” Petri said. “Maintaining good IAQ during the winter months when your home is closed up has always been a good idea. It is healthier and will also make your home more comfortable.”

For more information about Petri Plumbing & Heating, or to schedule a service call, visit https://www.petriplumbing.com/ or call  (718) 717-1089.

About Petri Plumbing & Heating, Inc.

Petri Plumbing & Heating, Inc. is a family owned and operated business serving Brooklyn and the New York City area. Founded in 1906, the company offers a 100 percent guarantee on all services, upfront pricing, and friendly and knowledgeable Service Experts for all kinds of home and business plumbing and heating needs. Services offered include water and gas pipe leak repair and installation, fixture installations, inspections, boiler repair, water heater installation, complete bathroom, kitchen, laundry & utility room remodeling and more. Petri is also licensed and certified by Green Plumbers USA, the first in New York City to receive this designation. For more information, please visit www.petriplumbing.com or call  (718) 717-1089.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Heather Ripley

Ripley PR

865-977-1973

[email protected]

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-york-hvac-experts-list-five-tips-to-improve-indoor-air-quality-301480997.html

SOURCE Petri Plumbing & Heating, Inc.

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Jeremy Altman has been keeping a notebook since early 2020. It is filled with ideas and observations about how the pandemic has sparked new trends in his industry.

Altman, an architect with Architecture Incorporated in Sioux Falls and Rapid City, South Dakota, said much has changed over the past two years.

Some architectural ideas that were not as popular before the pandemic have since become top-of-mind for many businesses and school districts. Often they’re not big alterations, but changes that make working and learning indoors potentially healthier environments for employees and students.

Better ventilation

Take windows, for example. Altman said that pre-pandemic it was popular for some schools and businesses to go with non-opening windows because they were less expensive. Nowadays, however, many request the pricier windows that open in an effort to provide better ventilation.

Because COVID-19 is a respiratory virus, having better ventilation in enclosed spaces makes sense.

“We’ve always, as architects and even our engineers, placed high importance on indoor air quality,” Altman said. “The idea has been that we spend so much time indoors, but the air indoors is quite often worse than polluted air outside.

“Our idea has always been that the solution to pollution is dilution. That has been a catch phrase, that you produce some fresh air by diluting the polluted air indoors with some windows that are operable. Sometimes in the past we saw a bit of resistance to that. Not so anymore. People recognize that’s a good thing to have. It’s almost an auto-include (in projects) anymore.”

Other tools that provide better ventilation indoors include one on the mechanical side called the bipolar ionization system.

Altman, who works mostly with public schools, said the system has been popular in these learning environments but that other types of buildings also have adopted it. He said even some airplanes now use the filtering system.

“It’s a system by which air can be purified,” he said. “And, it is a relatively simple addition to either existing mechanical systems or to new ones.”

As for the price tag, that also is “relatively inexpensive,” Altman said.

More space to work

Something that’s been touted ever since the first cases of COVID-19 were detected was the importance of social distancing to help lessen the spread of the virus. This is something that Altman said he’s noticed schools – and some businesses – are paying attention to. In an effort to provide more distance learning for students, buildings have remodeled space. Businesses have learned to leverage the use of rooms.

“People have had to make use of storage areas, even if only temporarily for somebody’s office,” he said. “When they’re thinking about future spaces, they’re thinking about that flexibility – the ability for a space to serve multiple uses, which is something we’ve always kept in our minds as architects and designers, but now we’re seeing it come from the owner side as well, which is validation of what we’ve always believed.”

Flexible spaces are good options for schools and multi-use areas, and are projects he continues to work on with clients. Flexible classrooms, Altman said, which can be modified to accommodate distance learning, allows education to continue at the school instead of students having to take virtual classes

“That’s something we’ve been incorporating,” he said.

Some restaurants also have created more space for their customers. Altman said restaurants that had access to outdoor space or an area that they could use for overflow helped them stay afloat during the early stages of the pandemic. And since at this point the pandemic continues, many businesses are pushing for similar options.

“We’re seeing the same for some businesses,” he said. “Those that serve the public, they also need the flexibility to go outside or to accommodate more space between users. … Before the pandemic there was a focus on consumer behavior, but now there’s more focus on human behavior – such as what are people going to do, as opposed to how do we sell things to them? That’s been kind of interesting.”

New buildings 

Stephanie McDaniel, president and CEO of BWBR, a multidisciplinary architecture firm based in Minneapolis but which has projects in both the Dakotas and western Minnesota, has also seen trends in the architecture and design fields, some of them related to health care. As one example, she said hospitals are becoming more focused on outpatient care and less on inpatient care.

There is an effort to create specialty hospitals for instance, and putting these buildings in places that are convenient for patients. One trend is that health care organizations are developing ambulatory surgery centers away from their care campuses.

“It is certainly something we’ve seen for a while, but continues,” McDaniel said. “It allows them to focus on the acute care of their main campuses.”

BWBR has a number of projects in health care, public education, and other fields that McDaniel is excited about, including with Fargo Public Schools and its Explorer Academy at Lewis & Clark Elementary.

Additions there will serve students who benefit from specialized programs from the Disabilities Education Act. McDaniel said the Explorer Academy is a “school within a school” model, an extension of Lewis & Clark Elementary that allows students to develop not only their academic skills, but personal and social skills and behaviors that help them better transition into a general education setting.

“Behavioral health is certainly something that we’re really keen on helping our clients with, because it’s such a key issue for us as a society,” she said.

BWBR is focused on “human-centered safety,” McDaniel said, noting that among its many other features, there is secure access to the Explorer Academy. It also is designed in such a way as to meet the building’s student and teacher needs instead of being a cookie-cutter model.

“That’s a bit of a BWBR trademark, to focus on the needs of the students and teachers as the center of the design, she said, noting the company’s motto is to focus on “transforming lives through exceptional environments.”

Evolving challenges 

Trends in architecture and design stretch beyond the office setting to the home office. According to a December report by

Forbes

, 33% of designers noted “luxurious comfort as a big trend, with soft materials and shapes” used “to bring a sense of well-being.”

That makes sense when more people these days are working from home. “With more time at home, people are more sensitive to comfort and feel,” according to the article.

As for challenges in the industry, there are those, too. Trent Stone, owner of Stone Group Architects in Sioux Falls, said the biggest has to do with supply and demand.

“We’ve actually been asked to do a bunch of emergency response projects, COVID isolation units,” Stone said. But with a tightening supply chain, it’s been tough to get needed materials. “Salt Lake City, Omaha City, St. Louis, Kansas City, Sioux Falls, Fargo, Minneapolis – they all ask the same question: how quickly could we have a COVID isolation unit put together?”

Answer: Not quick enough.

“I would say the biggest trend that we’re seeing right now is just a slowdown of delivery of raw material and increased cost of raw materials and labor,” he said.

Stone also said his field, like other industries, has been impacted by workforce challenges.

“Finding good people is a challenge probably everywhere,” he said. “I think we’ll probably start to come back to a quasi-normal if we end up going back to a little more stable environment, but our industry right now is just swamped. Everybody and their brother is trying to do something. We’re pretty fortunate right now to be able to pick what projects we want instead of every one that comes in the door.”

As the pandemic continues to evolve, so do the architecture and design fields.

Altman, of Architecture Incorporated, shared his perspective on that: Sure, the current times have brought some challenges to his field, especially as it relates to the supply chain, but architecture remains not only his bread and butter, but his passion.

He keeps his notebook handy, ready to scribble down any new ideas or trends as they come along.

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“Now that we’re in the final weeks of winter, most homeowners have had their homes closed up for months and the air quality is probably suffering,” said Michael Petri, owner of Petri Plumbing & Heating. “You may have noticed a musty odor or maybe you’re sneezing more. This can be due to poor indoor air quality. Luckily, there are some inexpensive things homeowners can do to improve the air they’re breathing.”

Petri suggested that homeowners follow these tips to breathe easier:

1.  Purchase an air purifier. Homeowners can opt to buy a portable model or consult with a professional to install a whole-home purifier. These work by trapping the offending particles and filtering and sanitizing the air before blowing it back into the room.

2.  Set out house plants. Plants consume the carbon dioxide that humans breath out and replace it with the oxygen humans breath in. Be careful, however, not to overwater plants because they can develop mold, which can cause other air quality issues.

3.  Crack a window. Not every winter day is freezing, so homeowners should keep an eye on the weather and try opening a window on days when the weather is a bit warmer and when the pollution level outside is at a lower level. Circulating outdoor air through the home can wipe away pollutants and other irritants.

4.  Change the air filters on the heating system regularly. Not only will this reduce pollutants in the air, it will keep the home’s HVAC or other heating system running smoothly.

5.  Maintain proper humidity levels. Humidity levels that are too high or too low can affect both overall health and comfort levels. Homeowners should try to maintain an indoor humidity level between 30-50%. If the indoor relative humidity goes above 60%, mold and mildew can begin to form. If the humidity level is too low, a whole-home humidifier can help add moisture to the air, while a dehumidifier or even some well-placed Boston ferns can help decrease the moisture level in a home with high humidity.

“COVID-19 has been on everyone’s mind for the past two years, and as a result, the health effects of poor air quality in general have become frequent topics of conservation,” Petri said. “Maintaining good IAQ during the winter months when your home is closed up has always been a good idea. It is healthier and will also make your home more comfortable.”

For more information about Petri Plumbing & Heating, or to schedule a service call, visit https://www.petriplumbing.com/ or call  (718) 717-1089.

About Petri Plumbing & Heating, Inc.

Petri Plumbing & Heating, Inc. is a family owned and operated business serving Brooklyn and the New York City area. Founded in 1906, the company offers a 100 percent guarantee on all services, upfront pricing, and friendly and knowledgeable Service Experts for all kinds of home and business plumbing and heating needs. Services offered include water and gas pipe leak repair and installation, fixture installations, inspections, boiler repair, water heater installation, complete bathroom, kitchen, laundry & utility room remodeling and more. Petri is also licensed and certified by Green Plumbers USA, the first in New York City to receive this designation. For more information, please visit www.petriplumbing.com or call  (718) 717-1089.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Heather Ripley
Ripley PR
865-977-1973
[email protected]

SOURCE Petri Plumbing & Heating, Inc.

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The services provided include air conditioning and repair, indoor air quality services, heater repair, and air conditioning services. The services get skillfully offered in Augusta, Martinez, Evans, North Augusta, Grovetown, and Harlem.

HVAC systems enable building owners and dwellers to control the temperatures within the building to their liking. Atlas Heating & Air Conditioning is a veteran-owned and operated company that began operations to provide clients with full-service heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration services.

Augusta, GA – Atlas Heating & Air Conditioning has customer-centered air conditioning repair Augusta technicians. Customer needs get carefully listened to, and any questions and concerns are comprehensively addressed to ensure that they are satisfied with the service provided. The company’s joy is the client’s comfortability in the operation of the new heating and cooling Augusta system and living a comfortable and healthy life. The company hires only the best technicians who provide clients with fast and reliable service for their homes or small businesses. Also, the company is an A+ BBB accredited business that assures clients of a quality and trustworthy air conditioning contractor Augusta service. The quality service provided has earned them a great reputation within the regions. 

Atlas Heating & Air Conditioning provides financing services for clients in need of financing for the services required. The financing option enables clients to get the repair or replacement service they require without waiting until they are financially able. Clients get to pay over time with the financial option with pre-qualification with no credit impact and no hidden fees or balloon payments. Some of the financing options provided include bad credit and Rheem rebate financing.   

About Us

Atlas Heating & Air Conditioning is a veteran-owned and operated company. For HVAC services, contact: 

Phone: (706) 855-7921

Address: 829 Stevens Creek Rd, Augusta, GA 30907

Media Contact
Company Name: Atlas Heating and Air Conditioning Inc
Contact Person: Pat Cutlip
Email: Send Email
Phone: (706) 855-7921
Address:411 Beverly Road
City: Augusta
State: Georgia
Country: United States
Website: http://www.atlasaugusta.com

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