Everything You Need to Know About RESET AIR Certification
Key Takeaways:
RESET Air Certification targets indoor air quality specifically, helping to mitigate airborne illness.
Certification requires accredited IAQ monitors that may add extra cost if not already installed.
Indoor air quality is of utmost importance, considering we spend the majority of our time indoors. Air quality has become even more important as the world grapples with an airborne virus causing a deadly pandemic. To help building owners and occupants better understand the quality of indoor air, Giga, an international organization based out of Shanghai, developed RESET Air Certification standards, a program that uses monitor-based and performance-driven indoor air quality metrics to assess and rate indoor air quality.
RESET Basics
Similar to LEED, Fitwel, and WELL, RESET Air Certification is one part of a larger sustainable building certification ecosystem as the first certification program that exclusively monitors IAQ. The certification breaks down into two categories; commercial interiors, where the program monitors, tracks and reports the quality of air for occupants, and building core, where the program monitors, tracks, and reports on the air quality being circulated by HVAC systems.
The rigor involved in setting up the program means RESET Air Certification is mostly aimed at larger commercial buildings, though residential applications are possible. RESET only offers two levels of certification: ”acceptable” for projects with 35 micrograms per cubic meter of air and “high performance” for projects that get as low as 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air.
The process begins by installing accredited IAQ monitors. To meet RESET’s standards, monitors must be wall mountable, hardwired, clearly display air quality, report IAQ to the RESET’s assessment cloud, be able to take measurements of PM2.5, TVOC, CO2, and in certain areas, CO, take continuous air samples and be calibrated annually.
Once the devices are in place, they are linked to a monitor that tracks airborne pollutants, relaying the information to RESET’s cloud for analysis. For transparency, RESET requires the monitor to be easy to understand and clearly displayed in specific parts of the building to be read by the public.
Cost
Pricing is based on the square footage of the property that seeks to be certified, using a logarithmic formula that brings the price down the larger the building. In addition to the equipment, which varies greatly in price and number needed to monitor space, setting up RESET at a 500,000 square foot building will cost about $15,000, and then $10,000 annually after, according to RESET’s price estimating calculator. Equipment costs plus fees to RESET make it one of the pricer certifications, but during an airborne pandemic, one of the most crucial.
To date, more than 6.6 million square feet of real estate around the world have been certified by RESET, including projects in London, Singapore, Beijing, and Washington D.C. RESET is working with the World Green Building Council and China Quality Certification Centre to make IAQ standardization a part of global building standards going forward.
