How to Ensure Your Air Quality Monitor Meets WELL Compliance Standards

If you’re planning to use indoor air quality (IAQ) monitors for your WELL building project, it’s crucial to make sure that your monitor’s technical specifications meet the requirements outlined in the WELL Building Standard.

If you don’t double-check for WELL compliance, you may end up choosing an IAQ monitor that cannot satisfy the requirements of precondition A01, meaning you might miss out on additional optimization points and/or you will also have to pay for on-site performance testing to meet WELL’s requirements.

Fortunately, verifying your air quality monitor tech specs for WELL compliance is a simple and straightforward process with just four steps.

Four Steps to Verify Your Air Quality Monitor for WELL Compliance

1. Find the right documents

   Pull up the tech spec sheet for your monitor and the Performance Verification Guidebook from WELL. In the Performance Verification Guidebook, scroll all the way to the end until you see the requirements for each of the different parameters listed out one by one (In Table 5: Sensor Technical Specification Requirements).

2. Do a line-by-line comparison

   Place these two documents side-by-side and compare WELL’s requirements for each parameter with your monitor’s tech specs. Make sure that your monitor matches the minimum requirements listed in the guidebook, which includes specifications like range, accuracy, and resolution.

   If you’re only looking to use air quality monitors to satisfy feature A08, then you will only need to perform this comparison for a minimum of three air quality parameters. However, if you want to use IAQ monitors to replace performance testing for air, then your monitor has to meet the technical requirements for a longer list of parameters — PM2.5, PM10, total volatile organic compounds (TVOC), carbon monoxide, and ozone.

3. Check for parameter-specific requirements

   Certain parameters, such as particulate matter and TVOC, have additional notes in the rightmost column that mention further requirements needed for WELL compliance. These requirements can be quite important when it comes to monitor compliance, so be sure to review this column for all of the parameters you want to measure.

4. Review frequency and submission requirements

   After confirming that your IAQ sensor meets WELL's technical requirements for continuous monitoring, look at the footnotes at the bottom of the guidebook that discuss the frequency at which measurements should be taken, as well as the requirements for sensor maintenance and calibration. Double-check that your air quality monitor can meet these requirements and, ideally, offers a simple method to perform maintenance and calibration.

Explore WELL-Compliant Commercial Air Quality Monitors for Your Project

If you need help verifying sensor compliance or want to view a line of WELL-compliant IAQ monitors, reach out to our team today, and we can help you find the best air quality monitor for your WELL project.