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Comment by mcculley | Hacker News Reader

I did some research on this: https://enki.org/2018/06/06/co2-monitoring/

I now am very conscious about keeping a door open and getting some fresh air into the room. This is a challenge in modern, well-insulated buildings in Florida in the summer.

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> Yesterday I carried my CO2 monitor around to various meetings in different places (much to the amusement of those with whom I was meeting). Every place I checked was at least 200 ppm higher than outside. In one office, two guys are working in a room that read over 1,500 ppm. I wonder if they would be more productive with proper ventilation.

That's worrying. Did you let them know? What was their reaction?

Yes, I let them know. They are moving into a new office very soon.

There are ventilation systems with heat recovery.

They are usually triggered by a timer or humidity, but it would be also possible to trigger them based on VOC or CO2 levels.

Single-room heat recovery ventilation units are relatively affordable (about $400). There are also some which can be integrated into the window frame if drilling a 6" hole into a wall isn't an option.

I have read about such systems. I have not seen any in Florida. Do they work for keeping heat out while exchanging air? Where I live, we are trying to get rid of heat, not recover it.

If human breath is in the 3.5-4% range, how does the difference between .05%(green building), and .15%(conventional building) in ambient air make such a large difference? It sounds like the small sample size exasperated the issues. The results are much less conclusive looking at other studies.

I can't speak to the study. My empirical results carrying a CO2 monitor around for just under one year show me that well-insulated buildings have much higher CO2 than drafty buildings. This is in Florida, where we generally keep doors and windows closed so as to not waste the energy we spend on air conditioning.

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