Morgue design inquiry

[cme]

I've got a morgue design added to the scope of work.

The hospital is a small coal town in PA and the morgue is used from time-to-time by the county coroner.

The current system has 2 fans, 1 exh, 1 supply and a residential window shaker AC unit. Supply fan is shut off. The window shaker is nowhere near the table.

The room is on the 1st floor at grade.

The new system is CV reheat with 30%/90% filters with a main 26,000 cfm AHU serving radiology, nuclear med, etc. I currently have 1150 cfm exh/850 cfm supply with the difference made up between 2 doors of 1 is exterior. I have 20 air changes/hr; 52 deg supply air.

Diffuser is one 90 deg, 24x48 1-way blow hemispherical at the coroner's back, 850 cfm.

I have pressure monitoring and alarm annunciation at the head end and alarm light at the room entrance. The cv reheat box closes if positive pressure occurs.

There is a body holding refrigerator, free-stamding, max 4 body count. They use it from time to time for amputee storage.

Does the refrigerator need exh? (and air changes/quantity)?

The exh fan is at grade currently. The ER entrance is about 50' away. To put the fan up high would look like heck and there is an intake on the sidewall of the hip roof. (There is a AHU in the attic space). Access on the roof for the fan is a major concern.

There are no intake louvers within 25' of the current exh fan location (sidewall at grade).

Shall I look at filters to effectively filter the odors?

I or no-one here has done morgue design.

 

[briand2]

I've done a couple of mortuary jobs in the UK. We need to comply with National Health Service documents HBN 20 (Facilities For Mortuary And Post Mortem Room Services) and HTM 2025 (Ventilation In Healthcare Premises). The main problem is not smells associated with the bodies themselves, but the smell of formaldehyde. Although our preference would normally be to discharge exhaust air at high level, the HBN 20 requirement is simply that "External discharge arrangements for extract systems should be protected against back pressure from adverse wind effects and should be located to avoid reintroduction of exhausted air into this or adjacent buildings through air intakes and windows". Another paragraph in HBN 20 states "Filtration on the extract system on the PM room is not considered necessary, but it is essential that the exhaust air outlet is located sufficiently well away from opening windows and air intakes". This is basically what we always try to achieve with exhaust air discharges, so the mortuary exhaust is therefore not particularly special. In other words, if you'd be happy to have ordinary office exhaust air discharges at this point, then it should also be acceptable (albeit not ideal) to have mortuary exhaust air discharge there.

With regard to body fridges, the ones I've been involved with have been of the "pass-through" type; they slide the bodies in from outside the post-mortem room and then open a door at the post-mortem room end to take the body in for dissection. There is therefore no special requirement for ventilating the fridge itself. One end of it is in the post-mortem room, which is ventilated, and the other end of it is in the body-handling area, which is also ventilated.

I hope this helps, but of course it is likely that you have local codes, etc in your own country which provide similar but more binding guidance.

Brian

 

[cme]

The room exterior walls are 18" thick and the fridge has doors on one end only.

The room is a single 13' x 25' room.

 

[stevenw]

20 air changes per hour should keep the odor level down.
The supply air is typicaly from the feet end of the tabel and the exhaust is at the head end. You should have a high and low exhaust grille. Look at a fume hood exhaust fan to get the discharge high into the air.