The Health Benefits Of Using Fabric Ducting Technology Within Your Building Project

Phil Black - PII Editor 20/03/2020

435 3 minutes read

Key points

Listen to this article

A lack of clean, fresh air circulating throughout a building can cause problems at any time of the year but especially during the warmer summer months.

Sick building syndrome can be seen as a result of poorly designed, and poorly ventilated buildings, and can include symptoms such as eye irritation, headaches, coughing and even chest tightness.

If this becomes a persistent issue amongst your work force, it could lead to a great reduction in staff efficiency, an increased level of absenteeism and staff turnover, an extension in the amount of breaks staff are taking, and even a reduction in overtime; with the additional consideration of lost time complaining and dealing with complaints.

Health Benefits

The Health and Safety Executive states there should be a minimum fresh-air flow of 8 litres per second per person, and that an area with an air flow velocity in excess of 0.25 to 0.35 metres per second should be considered as draughty and of less than 0.1 metres per second as stagnant.

Through the introduction of fabric ducting technology installed alongside heat recovery air handling units, distributing fresh air throughout your building ensures draught free air movement within the occupied zone without causing cold or hot areas within a room or work space.

Having clean, fresh, and draught free air ensures that your staff will feel more alert and less fatigued in the workplace, making us all more productive, the same can also be said for both warehousing and factory situations.

Fabric ducting, when mounted within a room, provides a large surface area of material with which to provide air at low velocity; additionally, long lengths of ducting allow good distribution throughout a space ensuring there are no stagnant spaces within an occupied space.

With an overall low purchase cost and fast installation time, fabric ducting is also a cost effective way of ensuring healthy air distribution within a project, and with a standard range of 9 colours to choose from or an option to print special colours, patterns or logo’s, it’s possible to have a positive emotional impact within the space too.

Environmental Benefits

For those looking for an environmentally-friendly solution to all of their ventilation issues, Prihoda UK are the only fabric ducting and ventilation solution suppliers in the United Kingdom able to supply fabric ducts made from 100% recycled material.

This is a polyester fabric duct usually made from recycled plastic water bottles. The plastic goes through a process of being filtered for impurities and then spun into a yarn with identical quality and properties.

This works to save over 66% in energy consumption, nearly 50% in water usage and over 34% in greenhouse gas emissions. It is also calculated that ducting companies such as Prihoda UK work to re-use approximately 13 plastic bottles for every meter squared of material utilised.

To help to back up these claims, IKEA recently chose to utilise Prihoda UK’s Recycled fabric ducting technology for their recent new build projects in Exeter and their BREEAM Outstanding rated store in Greenwich – the first retail unit ever to achieve this rating (and only the second building in Europe). IKEA worked to re-use over 55,000 plastic bottles by opting for recycled fabric ducting technology to be used within their Greenwich store.

Fabric Duct Maintenance

The maintenance of fabric ducting could not be any easier. All of the ducts zip together and are designed to fit the majority of commercial washing machines.

Care needs to be taken with washing and drying temperatures, which is why many fabric ducting suppliers will provide their customers with a full changeover and washing service from their in-house laundry, making maintaining the high quality of their fabric ducts an even easier task.

To conclude, while fabric ducting technology can have great health benefits for you, your business, and your work force when used within an industrial or commercial application, it can also have great environmental benefits also, if business opt to use recycled fabric ducting technology over other ducting options currently available on the market.