What Will it Take to Build an HVAC to Protect Against Coronavirus?

Every day we hear a new cure-all for Covid-19.  Bleach, steroids, plasma, UV lights, Oleander; what’s next?  As we get into colder weather and people have to socialize indoors, Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning creep into the conversation.  Let’s talk about what it will take to design an HVAC system that will actually do some good.

We don’t design HVACs, but our company validates them for FDA regulated industries.  So, we know something about what it takes to make them work.  We get involved in the beginning of a project, setting the engineering design basis, and at the end proving that the system actually performs as designed.

We’re only going to talk about the front end of an HVAC project here, because…well, you’ll see.

When you contemplate a new HVAC, you need to first of all tell the engineers what you’re trying to accomplish.  Are you packaging injectable drugs?  Fine, there’s a whole set of standards that tells the engineers the grade of filters, air flows, and test methods they need.  But we’re going to protect ourselves from the Covid-19 virus.  That’s different story.

Imagine we’re the users sitting with the engineers designing our new HVAC.  How would that conversation go?

Engineers:  What is the room we’re going to ventilate?

Engineers:  And if we heard correctly, you want to protect the customers from the Coronavirus, right?

Users:  Right.

Engineers:  What’s the infectious dose? 

Users:  Huh, what?

Engineers:  How many coronavirus particles does it take to infect the average person?  We need to know that in order to calculate the number of air changes.

Users:  We’ll have to get back to you on that.

Engineers:  Ok.  We’ll keep going.  How do you measure the number of coronavirus particles in the air? 

Users:  That’s why we signed that big contract with you.  You’re supposed to know that.

Engineers:  We don’t know, and none of the other HVAC companies do either.  If you look in the contract, it says “supplied by user”.  By the way, the test method needs to measure the number of viable virus particles.  The test methods in development until recently deactivate the virus.  That fooled us into thinking the virus can’t be transmitted by air.  Now we know better.

Users:  Why do you have to test the HVAC anyway?  Don’t you know that it works?

Engineers:  Any safety critical technology needs to be tested after installation.

Users:  Well, you guys really are pretty much useless. 

Engineers:  Yeah, without objective goals we’re no good to anybody.  But you have to admit, we got a great marketing department.

Fade to black.

So, there you have it.  You’ve just forked over a big hunk of change to revamp your HVAC and at the end of the day, you’ll have no idea whether it works.  There’s no way to test it today, and probably not for quite a while.

Oh, don’t think our pretend users are ignorant because they didn’t know what the infectious dose of Coronavirus is.  Nobody knows, and that will be a long time coming, too.

In the meantime, you’re going to hear about a new way to kill the Coronavirus on just about a daily basis.  My advice is to heed what my old boss once told me.

Walt really liked to fish.  Me, not so much.  But one day he talked me into going fishing with him.

Early on the appointed morning I arrived at the boat and showed him the new lure I had bought the night before.  “Walt, will this lure work?”

“Did you pay for it?” he asked.

“Yes, I paid for it,” I huffed.

“Then it works.”