For years, poor air quality has posed the largest environmental risk to public health in the UK, which is why it’s quickly moved from a background concern to a board-level discussion. So, for any business responsible for the safety of its employees, visitors or even customers, monitoring carbon dioxide has become a practical way to understand what needs to be done to improve conditions; be it checking ventilation, occupancy levels or overall indoor conditions.

At high concentrations CO₂ can cause headaches, dizziness, confusion and even loss of consciousness at extreme levels. This is why in Great Britain, it is classed as a ‘substance hazardous to health’ under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 (COSHH). While, at typical indoor levels there is no immediate danger, elevated readings are a clear indicator of poor air circulation. When fresh air isn’t entering a space effectively, airborne contaminants can linger for longer and cause problems.

Measuring CO₂ allows organisations to see where ventilation is falling short and where intervention is needed. With this in mind, Chris Potts, Marketing Director at ANT Telecom, explores the practical differences between traditional CO₂ monitors and connected IoT CO₂ sensors, and explains why the technology behind them matters…

The difference between standalone monitors and connected sensors

It’s important to understand that there are a number of CO₂ monitoring solutions on the market. Traditional CO₂ monitors are typically single devices designed to show conditions in a single space at a single moment in time. In contrast, IoT CO₂ sensors are connected devices that continuously collect data and feed it into a central system for wider visibility and analysis. Understanding this distinction is important, as it shapes how effectively organisations can monitor air quality and interpret trends to act on the information available to them. These differences become clearer when looking at how each device performs in practice…

1. Flexible installation supports better measurement

The location of where a CO₂ device is installed has a direct impact on the accuracy of the data it produces, making the flexibility of installation an important consideration. IoT sensors have no cables, making them really easy to install in the right place to get accurate readings. To install, all one would need to do is peel back the adhesive tape and place it on a wall at head height, away from windows, doors and air vents. This is a more efficient way than a traditional CO₂ monitor, which needs power or regular charging,  making them a lot harder to install in the right place unless you wire in a new electrical socket, which takes longer and adds to the cost.

2. Automating CO₂ readings across your devices

How CO₂ data is collected and accessed plays a significant role in how practical and reliable monitoring becomes day to day. With an IoT Automated Solution, CO₂ levels are automatically recorded across all rooms (where there are sensors) and presented centrally on a dashboard for you to review directly from your PC, Laptop and Smartphone. With traditional CO₂ monitors, the readings are presented only on the CO₂ monitor screen itself, which means an employee would need to go to the individual CO₂ monitor screen and collect this information manually. Which means you have to physically go to the monitor screen each time to take a reading. And if you are collecting readings from different rooms in a big office block, this can be a very time-consuming job.

3. Data that is more accurate than ever…

To make informed decisions about ventilation, organisations need data that reflects how conditions change throughout the day, not just isolated snapshots. An IoT solution excels at this by taking readings at set intervals throughout the day, 24/7. This is helpful because CO₂ levels change depending on how many people are in the room and how much fresh air is coming in. A traditional CO₂ monitor on the other hand requires constant manual readings throughout the day, meaning that it’s unlikely a business will get a true picture of the CO₂ in the building, let alone know the peak level.

4. Tracking improvement without adding administrative burden

A good IoT solution makes it far easier to see if your changes to improve ventilation are working or not. For example, you may decide to keep windows ajar each day for one week and see how this improves air quality within your rooms. With an IoT solution, it will be very easy to compare one week’s data with another, with very little effort. In contrast to this, using a traditional CO₂ monitor would mean using staff to manually collect data regularly each day, from each monitor on an ongoing basis. And potentially adding the figures into a spreadsheet to create charts to make a comparison. Again, another time-consuming and inefficient job for employees.

5. Early warnings without causing unnecessary alarm

Installing an IoT solution means that thresholds can be set to discreetly alert specific people when conditions have been breached. This early warning can help you to improve conditions, e.g. open a window for 10 minutes. CO₂ monitors can also alarm when conditions are met. However, this alarm won’t be able to just notify the correct few individuals. It will disturb everyone in the room. The negative of this is that if the alarm is triggered regularly, staff may disable it or decide it isn’t a safe environment to work in.

To conclude…

The benefits of using an automated IoT solution are clear: real-time measurements and real-time decision making. Of course, traditional CO₂ monitors may initially cost you less. However, when you consider all the time, effort and therefore money they require to run properly and give a business the information they need to actually improve ventilation, they work out to be far more costly. So, while automated IoT solutions  may cost a little more upfront, they provide businesses with automatic CO₂ readings, making it far easier to improve conditions for the safety and comfort of your staff and customers.