Do you seem to have persistent, bad-smelling odors within your office, school, or building—odors that just won’t seem to go away?

Here are some steps you can take to reduce or get rid of bad odors in your office.

1. Check out your HVAC

Your heating and cooling system really is the driving force behind the air quality in your entire building. If there’s an issue with your HVAC, that could be one of the reasons that foul smells don’t seem to go away; after all, if it’s not working properly, your indoor air quality will be impacted. Many times this is the first place people should look, but they don’t know they should be looking here.

There are several areas where your HVAC can be impacting your indoor air quality…and the freshness of your air. Just a few areas include:

• Your HVAC was designed for a specific building size and for a certain capacity within the facility. If that’s changed over time, your ventilation system design more specifically, may not be sufficient.
• Ventilation of air. If the ventilation of the outside air into your building isn’t working as it should, your air quality could be impacted.
• Outdoor air pollutants may be high in the area. Just think: these pollutants can even spread through your building via elevators, stairwells, and beyond. In turn, you may need to turn up the measures to control gaseous or chemical pollutants that may be making their way into, or through, your building.
• Preventive maintenance programs are there to do just that: prevent issues. But if proper upkeep isn’t happening, proper functioning could be impacted.

2. Use an air freshener

By all means, an air freshener isn’t always going to do the trick. But for a short-term solution that could help the issue, it’s a good place to start. Depending on the cause of the odor, it also may be able to neutralize odor-causing bacteria. We recommend using a solution that gets at the bacteria, rather than some of the available options that just mask the odor.

3. Do a thorough, deep cleaning

It may seem obvious to some, but sometimes the cause of a bad odor is a lack of cleanliness located somewhere in the building. If you haven’t already, consider a deep cleaning that can clean, disinfect and sanitize. Doing just one of the three may not be enough to get to the source of the odor problem.

4. Look for signs of too much humidity

You may have to explore what kind of smell it is to know more about the cause. For example, if the smell seems to be a moldy or musty smell, it could mean there is too much moisture in the building. (There are many other reasons, too, such as a plumbing issue or a drain line issue. Maybe you even have trash that hasn’t been taken out in a timely manner, as another example.)

Of course that’s a smell you don’t want to ignore as the damage to your building of office can happen quickly.

And, because mold and mildew thrive in parts of a building that has a lot of water or humidity, you may need to take action with a structural change or you may end up needing a dehumidifier to take some of the moisture out of the air in the building.

5. Check the drains

A culprit that can be really hard to pinpoint can be drains. It’s usually not the sink or the top of the drain—which tends to get cleaned—but the real source is below it. Food particles, waste, and other small debris can get trapped there, and over time, even if we clean the sink, the smell can become strong and foul.

Consider using a strong, liquid cleaner. There are many products (such as germicides) that are built for doing this kind of deep cleaning; solutions available today will destroy the bacteria, and in doing so, help you get rid of the odor-causing, unpleasant bacteria (1).

Indoor Air Management

High quality indoor air quality management can really help you deal with issues such as bad odors in the office. If you have concerns about the delivery of air in your office, it may be time to bring in the experts from GC Home Services.

If you have questions about your heating and cooling system selection, the location of your HVAC equipment, or you have any other concerns about your indoor air, give us a call today: 859-491-4915.

Sources:

1. https://www.cmmonline.com/articles/masking-and-eliminating-odors-in-the-workplace