Kennel Ventilation – Supply and Exhaust
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Correctly designed ventilation can reduce or eliminate odors, reduce bacteria buildup, and help maintain that fresh clean smell in the kennel. Your pets will be happier and you’ll spend less time trying to dry floors and eliminating the odors. If you have trouble understanding information in this article, email us on the web at Sun Hill Pet Supplies.
No matter the size of your facility, ventilation will play a key role in the first impression of visitors to the kennel. Simply stated, ventilation is controlled, directed air movement.
Design basics:
- Air exchanges: change all of the air in the room four to six times an hour. Calculate the room volume in cubic feet, multiply the result by four, five or six, then divide by sixty to find the air volume, in cfm (cubic feet per minute).
- Exhaust pick-up points: most kennel odors are created at the same level as the dogs so position your exhaust pick up points lower than 30 inches to insure the odors are pulled downward, away from your nose. However, not lower than twelve inches from the floor to prevent cleaning water from entering the ventilation system.
- How many exhaust pick up points: Multiple points throughout the room insure air movement has the chance to properly circulate. Remember we are not talking about the return air duct to your heat system, we’re talking about exhaust vents to remove air from the room.
- Air supply: Install your air supply vents, high up in the room. This allows the air to flow downward to the exhaust pick up points, thereby pulling the odors down, and away from your nose. Remember, supply air must be filtered and tempered, (heated or cooled), not be raw outside air. Your HVAC contractor can install a unit that provides sufficient fresh air into the ventilation system to meet the supply requirements.
- Position of air supply and exhaust vents: Position the supply vents over the aisle ways and the exhaust pick up points at the back of the runs in the walls or as pipes coming down the walls. If the heating source is a “hot air” system, have one third of the heated air introduced at the floor and two thirds introduced via the vents over the aisle ways.
- Type and design of the exhaust fan: You’ll want to use a blower with a centrifugal wheel as the air mover. Fans and blowers that use a blade similar to that of a window fan won’t be able to overcome the static pressure created by the ductwork required for multiple pick up points
- Size the blower: Create a safety factor by multiplying the cfm you calculated in step #1, by 1.5 to insure your moving enough air, then choose the exhaust blower to move that amount of cfm at ½” of static pressure or higher. Static pressure is resistance to air flow, usually created by the duct system.
- Duct sizing: High air velocity in the system will insure good air flow so size the ducts for around 2000 fpm (feet per minute) air velocity. The easiest approach to sizing is to determine the size of duct needed to handle the total air flow, then, install that size as the primary duct, throughout the building. Determine the number of drops you want and divide the area of the primary duct by the number of drops. Each drop is then sized to that area. Use this formula to determine primary duct size: (cfm / 1500fpm) x 144 = duct area in square inches
Formula information: · http://www.Grainger.com is a great source for blowers.
· Area of a circle: radius squared times 3.14 ( [r x r] x 3.14) Example of area of 3″ round duct: (1.5 x 1.5) x 3.14 = 7.065 sq inches
· Convert square inches to square feet: divide square inches by 144. From the example above 7.065 square inches divided by 144 = .049 square feet.
Example:
1. Kennel room is 20 ft x 15 ft with a 10 ft high ceiling: 20 x 20 x 10 = 4000 cubic feet
2. Five (5) air changes per hour = 4000 x 5 = 20,000 cubic feet
3. Determine cfm (cubic feet per minute) 20,000 / 60 = 333 cfm
4. Safety factor air flow: 1.5 x 333 = 500 cfm
5. From Grainger’s: http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/items/2C946 This blower moves 537 cfm at ½” of static pressure, and is only $165.38 and can be plugged into most outlets.
6. Primary duct size in square inches: (500cfm / 2000 fpm) x 144 = 36 square inch duct. You could use 6’x 6″ square duct, or 7″ diameter round duct.
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Source by Glenn Adams