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Throwing More Ventilation at Every Air Complaint Burns Energy — Why Airthings Makes the Case That IEQ Data in Your BMS Isn't the Right First Step
When office workers started complaining of headaches every winter, the building's BMS had nothing useful to say. Comfort readings looked normal. It took indoor air quality data to crack the case: every time the heating fired, volatile organic compound levels spiked into the red. The culprit was an uncapped test port in the mechanical room, quietly venting combustion air back into the HVAC supply. No one could see it or smell it. People just felt sick.
The story came from JJ Baird, a VP at Airthings, during a NexusCon session on indoor environmental quality (IEQ). His point: when building teams first get IEQ sensors, the question is almost always "can we pipe this into the BMS and control off it?" The answer is yes. Baird says that should be the last step, not the first.
The reason is a reflex he compared to holding a hammer, where "everything looks a bit like a nail." A BMS's instinct for any air complaint is to throw more ventilation at it. Sometimes that works. Often it just burns energy solving a non-problem, like ventilating away the VOC spike from a single burning candle. During a wildfire, ramping up outdoor air intake without the right filtration pulls more smoke particulate inside and makes the air worse.
Run the other direction, IEQ data guides the BMS instead of triggering it. During New York's 2023 wildfire smoke, Baird said Airthings customers acting on their data held indoor particulate under 50 while outdoor levels ran into the hundreds. Customers who didn't ran three to five times higher.
His takeaway for teams itching to automate: understand the building first, then automate the cases the data actually justifies. And for everyone still on the fence, "if you're not currently monitoring your IAQ, what are you doing? Just start."
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When office workers started complaining of headaches every winter, the building's BMS had nothing useful to say. Comfort readings looked normal. It took indoor air quality data to crack the case: every time the heating fired, volatile organic compound levels spiked into the red. The culprit was an uncapped test port in the mechanical room, quietly venting combustion air back into the HVAC supply. No one could see it or smell it. People just felt sick.
The story came from JJ Baird, a VP at Airthings, during a NexusCon session on indoor environmental quality (IEQ). His point: when building teams first get IEQ sensors, the question is almost always "can we pipe this into the BMS and control off it?" The answer is yes. Baird says that should be the last step, not the first.
The reason is a reflex he compared to holding a hammer, where "everything looks a bit like a nail." A BMS's instinct for any air complaint is to throw more ventilation at it. Sometimes that works. Often it just burns energy solving a non-problem, like ventilating away the VOC spike from a single burning candle. During a wildfire, ramping up outdoor air intake without the right filtration pulls more smoke particulate inside and makes the air worse.
Run the other direction, IEQ data guides the BMS instead of triggering it. During New York's 2023 wildfire smoke, Baird said Airthings customers acting on their data held indoor particulate under 50 while outdoor levels ran into the hundreds. Customers who didn't ran three to five times higher.
His takeaway for teams itching to automate: understand the building first, then automate the cases the data actually justifies. And for everyone still on the fence, "if you're not currently monitoring your IAQ, what are you doing? Just start."
Register for the next Nexus Labs event.
Sign up for the newsletter to get 5 stories like this per week:
This is a great piece!
I agree.