The air in our office building always felt heavy and smelled damp.
Due to the spread of Covid-19, it was no longer a requirement to work from the office every day of the week as long as you showed up on Mondays for the weekly meetings.
I found that every time I went to the office, my allergies flared up and this negatively affected my entire day. Imagine 8 hours of nursing a headache, clogged nose, teary eyes, and sneezing every 3 minutes. Turns out the parts of one of the new HVAC systems that had been installed 2 years ago were malfunctioning. The building manager was always up to date with the HVAC maintenance. During the last air conditioning repair service, the air conditioning technician discovered that some of the heating and cooling equipment wasn’t working at an optimal level. The quality of air was low because of the dirty washable filters and the air purifier was doing very little in removing all the aggravating particles in the office building. This was the main cause of my allergies, the circulating air was just not clean! We opted for a disposable filter, provided by the air conditioning supplier, which was better at trapping smaller particles. The technicians also did a thorough air duct cleaning that made sure that the quality air conditioner was functioning well. The dirty air vents were affecting the performance of the hot water boiler causing the wireless thermostat to malfunction showing wrong readings. I wondered to myself why the building manager did not opt for a propane boiler or an oil furnace as the filter used in these furnaces needed to be replaced often to maintain the quality of air. After the maintenance, my allergies seemed to almost immediately stop and I could now enjoy my Mondays.