Air that moves the right way — fresh in, fumes out, smoke kept where it belongs.

Positive pressurisation pushes clean air into a space (like a stairwell) so smoke or contaminated air can't enter from outside. Negative pressurisation does the opposite — it pulls air out of a space (like a kitchen or toilet) so odours and fumes are exhausted rather than spreading to adjoining rooms. Getting the direction right is what makes the system actually do its job.

Yes — a kitchen hood pulling out cooking fumes needs an equivalent volume of fresh make-up air brought in, or it starves itself and pulls air (and smells) from the dining area instead. We size both sides of that balance together, not just the extraction fan.

Enclosed basements and car parks typically require mechanical ventilation under fire and building safety codes, sized to clear vehicle exhaust and smoke within a set time. We design to the applicable code requirement for your building's occupancy and structure.

Air conditioning cools and recirculates the same air. Ventilation exchanges stale indoor air for fresh outdoor air (or exhausts contaminated air outward). Most commercial buildings need both — cooling for comfort, ventilation for air quality and code compliance — and we design them to work together, not against each other.

In most cases, yes. We assess existing shaft and duct routes, fan room availability and electrical capacity during a site survey, then design around what the building already has rather than assuming a clean-sheet layout.

Sizing is based on occupancy, room volume and the applicable air-change-per-hour requirement for that space type — a kitchen, a basement and an office each have different standards. We calculate this alongside the heat-load work we do for any HVAC design.

There's a running cost to moving air, but a correctly sized system uses no more fan power than the code and occupancy actually require. Oversized or poorly balanced systems are the real cost driver — which is why we size against calculated demand, not a rule of thumb.

Fan motors, belts, filters and duct interiors need periodic inspection and cleaning, and airflow should be re-verified annually to confirm the system is still delivering the pressure it was designed for. We cover this under our standard AMC alongside AC servicing.