The environment in which we live, work, sleep or play has a big impact on our overall well-being. Our mood, energy levels, how well we sleep and how efficient we are during the day are all influenced by the indoor quality of the buildings we use. We spend nearly 90% of our lives indoors, so our buildings have a greater impact on our health than our lifestyle, health care and genetics. So it is perhaps not surprising that improving the well quality of our buildings is going to be a trillion dollar business.
WELL Certification
The international WELL Building Institue aims to transform buildings and communities through the WELL Building Standard. The standard is a rating system that focuses on how buildings and what they contain work to improve our health and well-being. It provides a framework for achieving building well-being. Which can be used to register any building, office or other space to achieve certification.WELL works with global green building rating systems such as LEED and BREEAM to enhance and add new dynamics to building performance.The steps to achieve certification provide access to a wide range of products. instead of formally certifying a building, we have much to gain by introducing the Wellness concept in our next project.
What indoor elements does building wellness take into account?
Az épület wellness tovább lép a szokásos épületautomatizálási rendszereken és a belső környezet számos aspektusát szabályozza, ideértve:
Air
The World Health Organization estimates that 12.7% of deaths could be prevented by improving air quality worldwide, with some pollution indicators being 2-5 times higher indoors than outdoors. Wellbeing interventions aim to promote clean air and reduce or minimise indoor air pollution. This could be anything from the use of non-polluting building materials to demand-based ventilation and air purification.
Water
The positive effects of effective hydration on cognitive performance and general health are widely recognised. Although many people take the quality of drinking water for granted, much of it contains contaminants that can lead to a host of health-related complaints. The goal of building wellness is to provide cleaner, better tasting water in buildings by filtering out contaminants.
Lighting
Elektro-Kamleithner Kft. has long been a proponent of the benefits of human-centred lighting. The timing, quality and duration of lighting in our everyday environment has a huge impact on our health and well-being. Light has an effect on our circadian rhythms; our natural body cycles, which among other physiological processes, regulate our sleep and wake times. Wellbeing focuses on providing lighting cycles that minimize disruption to the body's circadian system, improving productivity, supporting sleep quality and keeping us in sync with nature.
Comfort
Comfort factors, including temperature, humidity and ergonomics, contribute to sleep quality, productivity and overall physical comfort. Wellbeing takes into account thermal, acoustic, air quality and ergonomic comfort to optimise the indoor environment.
Community background
Recently, the focus of environmental wellness has been on commercial environments such as offices, shops, hotels and restaurants. Companies are improving employee engagement and productivity by optimising indoor environmental conditions and implementing better building policies. The return on investment for happier and healthier workers is a long-term investment, but one that pays off. These concepts and principles are equally relevant in the residential environment (single-family homes or apartments). So we can expect to see the same solutions that are already being applied in commercial buildings in this area.
The role of KNX in the building wellness revolution
Building wellness is designed to collect data from the indoor environment to control or ensure that building occupants remain healthy. With a history of more than 30 years, KNX offers the perfect platform to make building wellness available in both commercial and residential buildings. Scalability means it is one of the best systems for collecting environmental data in buildings of any size, and the decentralised nature of the systems ensures reliability and cost-effectiveness.