Dear friends,
Ever since the start of the covid-19 pandemic, I have been working to apply engineering, or at least an engineering attitude, to make sense of everything and figure out how to be safer and help others be safer. Beginning a couple of months ago, we started a “soft roll-out” of a covid-19 blog to our company website, where we share the latest information and personal practices that we have developed, along with a curated collection of local and national stories, plus a few products that we have for sale, specially modified for enhancing covid-19 safety. Here’s a link to the blog:
Kohler and Lewis Covid-19 Blog
It’s been gratifying for us to be able to help more than a dozen schools last year to improve their fresh air ventilation—a key method to reduce the covid-19 transmission risk. But we’re only a small company, and can’t do the engineering for everyone. So in the blog and on the website we have posted much of the key information that people can take and apply themselves to their own situations. Some of these are short videos, and some are written documents. For example, you’ll find a comprehensive guide to enhanced fresh air ventilation, focused on Vermont schools but applicable to any building, plus a succinct do-it-yourself guide for making the best out of what you have in your existing building (maybe just opening windows). These are in the blog and also in this section of the website:
When it comes to fresh air ventilation in buildings, more is always better in terms of reducing risk of covid-19 transmission. If you achieve the same ventilation level as being outside, you will have the same extremely low risk. However, your building will also be at about the same temperature as it is outside, so for practical reasons most people choose to have somewhat less fresh air, and more heat. Fortunately, we have an excellent technology to help find a good balance point, and that is measurement of carbon dioxide (CO2). This is all explained in the various documents and videos on the website, but the key (little-known) aspect of all this is that nearly all of the CO2 meters being sold today are wildly inaccurate right out of the box, or become inaccurate after a few weeks of use. For this reason, we at Kohler & Lewis offer meters for sale that we have carefully selected, tested, and adjusted to work accurately for years to come. (We don’t really want to be in the business of selling meters, so if anyone wants to take over this operation, talk to us!)
All our meters boil things down to green-yellow-red indicator lights, and many people are finding this approach very helpful in controlling their fresh air levels in their offices, churches, stores, and other buildings.
Finally, we also share on the website our personal practices for covid-19 safety, which are not engineering per se, and certainly not medical advice, but just sharing what we ourselves do regarding masks, testing, office policies, family gatherings, etc.
If you like the website and would like to be reminded of it by getting an emailed newsletter two or three times a month, you can “subscribe” to the blog - at the bottom of the blog page.
If you need a limited amount of help with your do-it-yourself work to enhance the ventilation in your buildings, we can consult with you by phone or Zoom for a pre-paid hourly fee.
Wishing you a safe and joyous holiday season!