oxygen

Oxygen is a new "perk" here in our office. I know, I know...what will they give us next in bennies--a coffee machine that works?? For the four years that I've worked in this building, it's been stuffy and hot back in our area. Like "trapped in a small box with no airholes" stuffy. We complained over the years, but everyone pretty much wrote it off to the fact that there are a lot of people and computers back here, and we are in what was the old University Library's "stacks" area, so the floors are closer together, the ceilings lower, to support the weight of the books. The rest of the building has very high ceilings--anywhere from 10 to 30 feet high.

But in the past year, the stuffiness got worse and worse. The amount of sickness in our area last winter was appalling, with everyone passing around everything two or three times. I just couldn't BREATHE. I thought it was because I'm outside a lot and we keep our house very open, and I am just used to more air flow. Turns out, we finally complained enough to get them to place monitors in our area. Good levels of C02 are between 300-400. Danger-to-human-life
level is 8000. We were reading 4500 by 15 minutes after everyone arrived at work, and staying there all day. We literally did not have enough oxygen in here to breathe freely.

They did some investigation and found that the main problem was not air flow from other areas, but that of the 25 air exchange fans on the roof of the building, 18 of them were not working! These were fixed over the weekend, and on Monday, we noted an absolutely amazing difference in the air quality. It feels so much better. I'm not catching myself doing this tired-like sighing thing all day like I was from feeling so groggy and suffocated. Our heat/air units were also not working, which explained the complete lack of air conditioning and the 90 degree temps back here all year round. They fixed that, too, and it's a pleasant 70-something in here now. Hopefully I won't have to wear tank tops to work this winter.

I told my boss that I was feeling happy happy about the air situation. He said, "That's scary." Apparently I'm a bit too perky on all this oxygen. :)  Photo: son, happy happy, on trampoline