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Remote IoT sensor updates

Comfort and air quality in schools

CHALLENGE

A municipality with 35,000 inhabitants wishes to ensure the ambient comfort (temperature and humidity) and good indoor air quality of its schools. The aim is to guarantee a pleasant working environment for pupils, teachers, and mayoral staff, in which their health is protected.

In addition, thanks to this solution, the town hall would like to be able to benefit from a concrete indication of the evolution of the humidity level in the various buildings that make up the schools in its municipality. The objective is to be alerted as soon as the level exceeds the standards in order to act quickly to preserve the building concerned.

The analysis of these different data, coupled with the data collected on the heating and ventilation equipment, will make it possible to improve the settings of the collective heating and ventilation equipment according to the actual use of the building.

Type of buildings:

12 schools (nursery school + elementary school)
Between 2 and 4 buildings per school
From 1 to 3 floors per building

SOLUTION

To meet this need, the town council turned to an IoT solution in order to have a reliable solution that was easy to install and that allowed them to have an evolution over time of the measured indicators.

The town council has installed 180 COMFORT CO2 sensors in the buildings of the 12 schools in its municipality. These sensors regularly measure CO2 levels, temperature level and humidity levels.

The sensors have been placed in each classroom, in the refectory, as well as in corridors, offices, staircases, etc (mixing the north/south orientation and the floors makes it possible to take into account potential hydraulic disequilibrium, wind, insulation, etc., in order to obtain a representative overview of the different environmental conditions in the entire building).

After several months of use and observation, the town council wishes to modify certain parameters of these sensors. To do so, they use the KARE+ function of their Adeunis sensors, allowing them to load a new custom configuration quickly and remotely on all the sensors of a site.

The advantages of this solution:

processing by product groups,
no physical intervention on the products,
easy to use,
fast execution,
secure.

The person in charge of the solution at the town hall went to the first school to carry out this configuration update. No need to go inside the buildings, no need to physically intervene on the products, only a few minutes are necessary. He positions himself at the location that seems to be the most central to the location of the sensors and starts the KARE+ application to launch his new configuration. Without having to go anywhere, he reaches all the sensors in the school and updates their settings. He then simply repeats the operation in the other two schools.

FOCUS ON FRENCH REGULATION

Regulatory monitoring of indoor air quality in public buildings will change in 2023

Legal context

The obligation of periodic monitoring of indoor air quality in certain establishments open to the public was introduced in the Grenelle II law in 2010.

Decree no. 2015-1000 of 17 August 2015 set the following application deadlines:

1 January 2018 for childcare facilities for children under the age of six (nurseries and primary schools) ;
1 January 2020 for leisure centrs and secondary schools (high schools and middle schools).

New on 1 January 2023:

From now on, the obligation to monitor air quality includes:

an annual assessment of the ventilation systems in buildings, including direct measurement of carbon dioxide concentration;
self-assessment of indoor air quality, at least once every four years;
a measurement campaign for regulatory pollutants (formaldehyde, benzene and CO2) within 7 months of an important stage in the building’s life cycle that may affect indoor air quality;
the elaboration of an action plan taking into account the data from the above-mentioned stages and aiming at improving IAQ.

Moreover, the decree n° 2022-1690 specifies the modalities of verification of the indoor air quality.

The measurement of carbon dioxide concentration as a necessary part of the annual assessment of ventilation equipment;
Key stages in the life of the building that may impact indoor air quality and the number of pollutants in need of measuring;
The threshold values of regulated pollutants and the time frame for the campaigns.

In order to complete this regulation, starting 1 January 2025, other establishments open to the public (ERP) should be concerned by this law, namely: social and medico-social structures or juvenile hall.

Source: Légifrance