Healthcare Premises

It is essential that hospitals carry out regular maintenance and inspection of all ventilation systems. Critical ventilation systems require even greater attention, while the areas they serve have to be validated and cleaned to a high standard. Simple routine maintenance and cleaning is not adequate.

Aquacair Limited provides monitoring, maintenance and specialist cleaning services for Healthcare Premises in line with Health Technical Memorandum 03-01: Specialised ventilation for healthcare premises.

Annual inspection of general ventilation systems and quarterly inspection of critical ventilation systems is required according to HTM03-01.

A full inspection of all component surfaces and surface microbe sampling is carried out and a compliance report provided including executive summary, recommendations and illustrative photographs.

Annual verification of system performance

 

Supply & extract air flow rates.	Air change rates.	Room differential pressures.	Noise levels
Air quality (particle counts and airborne microbe concentrations).	Control function performance: set back status, temperature and humidity control.	Fabric of the served area.	Air velocity within ultra clean theatres.

 

HTM03-01 Air Quality Guidance

HTM2025 states that unoccupied operating theatre air should not contain more than 10 colony forming units of bacteria or fungi per cubic metre of air.

Airborne particle counts are a convenient way to assess air cleanliness, providing an immediate indication where microbe sampling can take several days to reveal the level of contamination.

Air particle counts in Theatres would expect to record at least ISO class 8 cleanliness while air samples beneath HEPA filters in ultra clean theatre canopies should record zero particles.