Recentemente, e apesar das orientações já fornecidas no Brasil pela ABRAVA, quanto aos cuidados necessários para se manter o sistema de ar condicionado em ambientes desocupados ou parcialmente desocupados, tenho me deparado com algumas edificações que não adotam ainda tais cuidados, mantendo de forma equivocada os seus sistemas desligados.

Como primeiro resultado mais aparente, observa-se o forte odor em salas e principalmente dentro de condicionadores, pois estes operavam até algum tempo atrás, com umidade em seu interior.

O site Consulting – Specifying Engineers divulgou recentemente um artigo sobre estes cuidados, recomendando a atenção de engenheiros responsáveis por estas operações.

O artigo diz que “em alguns casos, a reabertura de edifícios após um período de fechamento devido a questões emergenciais de saúde, será similar ao reuso de qualquer edificação que tenha sido mantida como desativada, durante um período. Dependendo do tempo no qual esta edificação esteve desativada, poderá ser recomendado a condução de algum nível de RECOMISSIONAMENTO sobre os sistemas prediais, assim como a verificação de suas características para a preservação da saúde, nestes edifícios”.

O texto está em inglês, mas recomendo a sua leitura abaixo:

NFPA 101 and COVID-19

Engineers need to consider the public health and life safety issues of reopening a building after COVID-19

From (de): Consulting – Specifying Engineer

By (por): WILLIAM E. KOFFEL, PE, FSFPE, KOFFEL ASSOCIATES, COLUMBIA, MD.

It is unlikely that many, if any, members of an NFPA Life Safety Technical Committee truly considered the impact of a global pandemic as they participated in the code development process. Engineers must consider life safety considerations as buildings reopen, and also look at applying the requirements of NFPA 101: Life Safety Code to those buildings that remained operational during COVID-19.

In some ways, reopening a building after closure for some period of time as the result of a public health emergency is similar to reusing any building that had been closed for a period of time. Depending on the duration that the building was closed, it may be appropriate to conduct some level of recommissioning of the building systems and the life safety features of the building.

The extent to which the building needs to be recommissioned can be determined considering a number of factors, including:

• Did the fire protection systems remain in service? Presumably they did because fire codes generally require that fire protection systems remain in service even in vacant buildings. However, if the fire protection systems did not remain in service, additional evaluation may be needed. If water was removed from a wet pipe fire protection system, there is likely increased corrosion in the pipe. Studies have also shown that the introduction of new water into steel pipe will result in accelerated corrosion for a period of time shortly after the water enters the pipe.
• Were other building systems maintained in service? Many of the fire protection systems required by NFPA 101 are impacted by environmental conditions: humidity, temperature, dust, etc. While building systems may not have been operating at the same level as when the building was occupied, if the systems are shutdown these environmental conditions are not being maintained in the building. For example, if a heating, ventilation and air conditioning system is not operating for a period of time there could be increased dust accumulating in the ducts, which could result in increased nuisance alarms from smoke detectors when the system is reactivated.
• Environmental and climatic conditions can also impact the operation of other life safety features of the building. For example, the lack of use could result in situations in which egress doors may be more difficult to open. From an egress perspective, one way to address this issue is to simply walk every egress path and use each component that is encountered that would be used to egress the building (e.g., open every door along the path of egress).

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Link da página do artigo: https://www.csemag.com/articles/nfpa-101-and-covid-19/?oly_enc_id=3803H7421378F9H