If you own a commercial building, your job is to keep it clean and welcoming for the people who use it day to day. You hire regular cleaners, have maintenance guys on standby, are quick to address any issues as soon as you hear about them.

However, there is something that a lot of commercial building owners ignore: ventilation. Poor ventilation can lead to a number of issues, some of them so severe that your building could be forcibly closed until it's resolved.

To ensure this doesn't affect you, make sure that you're doing everything possible to keep the air inside your building fresh.

What is Ventilation?

Ventilation involves bringing fresh air from outside your building, inside. This can be done by opening windows, trickle vents, or with more advanced solutions such as PIV units.

When you improve ventilation, you add new, fresh air to the room. This dilutes the stale air, dries out a lot of the airborne moisture, and helps to reduce allergens.

If you control ventilation, you can also control humidity and interior temperature as well as the overall air quality. In a commercial building that is being used by other people, it isn't ideal to rely on them to ventilate the space each day, so the more permanent solutions are often ideal.

But why is it so important?

How Poor Ventilation Affects Commercial Buildings

Just like in our homes, poor ventilation in a commercial building can lead to a range of issues. The least concerning is simply poor air quality, where the room feels stuffy in summer or overly humid before you open the windows.

If left unchecked, this moisture-rich air can cause major damage and present serious health problems. When the room cools, the moisture in the air is deposited onto your surfaces. Desks and other furnishings, curtains and carpets, even the walls and floors.

This can not only lead to damp patches, which ruin furniture and the look of your walls, but this dampness also allows mould to grow. If mould is ignored, it will spread fast, making the job of getting rid of it much harder.

In some cases mould can become so severe that the building needs to be shut down until it is all removed; this is something no commercial building owner wants to deal with.

How Stale Air Causes Allergic Reactions

Airborne particles are inevitable in any home or commercial building. But when the air is moving, those particles are able to escape. In a room with bad ventilation, the allergens have nowhere to go, and often find themselves in our noses, throats, and lungs.

If someone in your building has allergies, improving ventilation will help to keep them healthy. However, simply moving the air around the room is not enough, so air conditioning units and static fans aren't the solution.

To ensure the cleanest air possible, you need an efficient solution, but it isn't as easy as it seems.

Why Commercial Buildings Struggle with Ventilation

There are two main reasons why it can be tricky to effectively ventilate a commercial building.

The first is the size. Take an office building, for example. It will likely have a large, open floor plan or have wide corridors leading to spacious private offices.

However, in such a wide open space, simply opening a couple of windows isn't enough to bring in enough fresh air, especially if they only create a small gap for safety and security purposes.

The air coming in from windows can only travel so far, so the air towards the windowless side of the room can still be stale. Your building might also have stock rooms and kitchenettes that don't have windows at all — these are just waiting to grow mould.

Another issue is that your commercial building may be closed for set periods of time. A school, for example, may be almost empty for weeks or even months at a time. If your teachers and students return to find mould and airborne allergens, they won't have a good start to the new term, and it'll put pressure on you to fix it fast. Even if you just shut up shop for weekends, mould and damp can be hard at work while you aren't.

No matter what issues you're facing, we're here to help.

The Best Ventilation Solutions for Commercial Buildings

Even if the issues are plain to see, picking the correct ventilation solution isn't easy. Some commercial building owners throw money away by investing in something that helps, but doesn't do enough to solve the problem entirely.

To get it right first time, you need professional ventilation solutions you can trust. Here's what we offer for commercial buildings:

• PIV Units
• Through Wall Kits
• Bathroom Extractor Fans
• Kitchen Extractor Fans

These can be split into two categories. PIV units are building-wide solutions that improve ventilation in every room. This improves air quality, helps to disperse allergens, and will ensure you never have to deal with any mould.

However, these require a major installation, and therefore come at a higher cost. On the other hand, extractor fans and through-wall kits help to isolate issues effectively.

For example, if you're finding patches of mould in your building's kitchen, but nowhere else, a kitchen extractor fan is all you need. Or if you're finding damp patches on a wall with no windows, you can install a gravity grille or similar solution that improves ventilation in that area.

There are a lot of options for your building. That's why we're here to provide you with all the information you need to make the most informed decision. We'll listen to you explain your issues, and then suggest the best course of action.

We're one of the UK's most trusted suppliers, providing ventilation solutions for installers, specifiers, homeowners, and businesses with commercial buildings. Every one of our solutions is fully compliant and built to last, helping you to improve air quality within your building for the foreseeable future.

If you have any questions about us or what we do, please don't hesitate to contact us. We look forward to hearing from you.