The Ventilation System or the Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR) of the passive house generally draws fresh air from the atmosphere and pushes them into the rooms. During this epidemic triggered off by the COVID 19 people are permitted to move around in the open as long as they maintain social distancing as prescribed by the experts. Indeed, like all the other viruses that are exhaled by the infected people are diluted strongly. Hence, the concentration of viruses in the atmosphere is low enough to turn harmless. So the bottom line is that, COVID 19 is not airborne and even if it is airborne it cannot stay in the air long enough to be a genuine threat.
The Ventilation issue of Passive House
The pandemic condition that is prevailing at this point shows pretty vividly why the passive house builders in Melbourne as well as the experts are putting more emphasis on the ventilation of the passive houses and buildings with the fresh air outside. They have also clearly mentioned why it is highly dangerous to use recirculated air ventilation.
Here is a quick look!
The air outside may be polluted, but it will only and only be polluted by dust, which can anyway be filtered by the high-quality fine-class filters like F7..F9, which are recommended by the passive house specialists and are as such, installed at the external air ducts. In fact, only recently, a statement that was published by the German Society of Ventilation (FKG) clearly stated that the passive house ventilation systems (MVHR) that are operating with the atmospheric air should be kept operating and should never be switched off. They also warned against the dangers of reducing or switching off the outside airflow.
To ascertain the gravity of their warning, it is essential to compare the ventilation system of the passive houses in Melbourne with that of the conventional buildings, which do not have any controlled ventilation system. They have clearly stated that all the conventional buildings without these controlled ventilation systems MUST have all their rooms properly ventilated with the atmospheric air. Rooms with a ventilation system that have no connection with the atmospheric air, like in AC rooms, trains, buses, and cars are highly dangerous zones and people using them are more prone to get infected by COVID 19 than those who are not.
The experts are of the opinion that the spaces with conditioned atmosphere might get virally contaminated and this can pose a real danger when the air accumulates into the interior spaces inhabited by users. In passive houses, with high tech filters properly installed at strategic entry points of the air, the intake air is even cleaner. That is the reason, the passive house experts in Melbourne like any other place will recommend proper operation of the outdoor air ventilation mechanism, even during the COVID 19 Pandemic.
