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by bjackman 28 days ago
IMO it's something where an intervention is often cheap enough that it's worth it even without great evidence.

But also bear in mind that regardless of "are we operating at max effectiveness", OSHA sets a legal limit of 5000ppm in a workplace, and that's about _safety_.

This article is talking about keeping levels below 1000 which is a very high standard IMO (still arguably justified given the studies mentioned). But if you are in a poorly ventilated home office you could easily hit 3000. At that point you are closer to "illegal in the US" than "earth's atmosphere".

So yeah even if you are unconvinced about micro-optimising your CO2 levels there's a very long established argument in favour of at least paying _some_ attention to it.

1 comments

It's not even that hard to optimise at home. I've found simply leaving the door open to the rest of the house causes the room CO2 to not elevate much over baseline outdoor readings. Or just opening a window just a crack will rapidly remove all excess co2.

The real problem is offices and meeting rooms where you have 10 people in a small box for hours and windows that don't open.

That's interesting coz I found the opposite, at my place to keep the level below 1k I usually have to open a window in the room I'm in, or use a fan.

I live on a noisy street so I don't usually want to do that, if I open a window at the back and keep internal doors open it will stay reasonable but significantly elevated.

So yeah I think the lesson here is you probably need to buy a sensor, different homes are gonna differ.

My home is quite small (probably 80m²) and has literally zero ventilation built in (even in the bathroom!). I live in Switzerland where it's traditional to actively ventilate your home twice a day. But that doesn't do anything for CO2. Also it's such a fucking waste of time lol. Looking forward to moving into a modern building.

I think it’s just quite windy where I am combined with a not particularly airtight building so opening the window just a crack results in a lot of air blowing in
Yeah I was thinking airtightness might be the difference. My flat seems to be bizarrely hermetic (when you turn on the kitchen extractor fan, it struggles if you don't have a window open somewhere).

So maybe a few leaky cracks are enough that when you open a window you get a bit of a through-draft.