Archinect
anchor

COVID-19 Sanitation Room Design Suggestions

Jsilveira

Hey folks,

My firm is renovating a meal delivery service facility and we would like to design in a sanitation area. I was wondering if anyone has suggestions for guidelines or precedents to look at. 

The facility preps and sends meals out for delivery to elderly neighbors, which means it has a kitchen, offices, and loading dock. We would like to design a room near the entry for workers to sanitize and change clothes when headed out or returning from a delivery. 

It needs to function similar a scrub up room, in that it's a space dedicated for sterilization and changing clothes off of the general flow of traffic. It is unlikely that there will be more than one person in this room at a time, so privacy is a smaller concern. 

Do you have examples or guidelines for designing in rooms like this?

Thank you so much. Ya'll are the best. 

P.S. I've included a diagram of how the space needs to function. 

 
Jul 7, 20 2:22 pm

Bad troll.  No cookie for your. 


Jul 7, 20 2:29 pm  · 
1  · 
Jsilveira

Sorry, I am not trying to troll anyone. I'm looking for advice or other's who have done a similar design.

Jul 7, 20 3:57 pm  · 
 · 

Sorry but this is something an architect should be able to figure out. I mean it's what we are hired by our clients to provide. I think you're probably an owner who wants free advice from an architect.

Jul 7, 20 4:14 pm  · 
1  · 
Jsilveira

Not at all. I am a recent graduate sent on a precedent finding mission. I have no experience in the healthcare industry, so I apologize if I come across as ignorant. I'm only trying to find how other architects and designers have designed changing rooms.

Jul 7, 20 4:18 pm  · 
 · 

If you're a recent grad then have your firm help you out. I may be blunt and crass with these comments however this is the type of thing you should already know how to research if you have a degree in architecture.

Jul 7, 20 4:24 pm  · 
 · 
Jsilveira

Yeah, the comments were pretty rough. "This is the area of a consultant, go hire one." Would have worked just fine.

Jul 7, 20 4:41 pm  · 
 · 

It's not an area to hire a consultant though - you question could of been answered with a google search. I still think you should be asking your co workers this instead of the internet.  That is unless you have no co workers and are asking us to do the work you where hired to do . . . 

Jul 7, 20 6:50 pm  · 
 · 
Jsilveira

Not asking others to do my work. Just looking for advice. Thanks.

Jul 7, 20 6:58 pm  · 
 · 

I kind of doubt it but I'll give you a bit of advice.


This is assuming that you are doing deliveries of items and workers are flowing in and out of the 'work area'.  There will still be issues of making sure contaminated PPE isn't exposed to 'clean' areas.  The sketch below is just about the possible flow of the space. 



Jul 7, 20 7:10 pm  · 
1  · 
Jsilveira

That's really helpful. Thank you. If I understand your diagram correctly you have twin entry and egress paths, where you dispose of used PPE, sanitize, then put on clean PPE. With the green areas appear to be disposal points for the PPE. Is that correct?

Assuming I haven't completely misread this, why do you have the paths branching then joining back together? Are they using twin sanitation rooms?

BTW, Nice lettering. ;)

Jul 7, 20 7:23 pm  · 
 · 

The changing / sanitizing rooms are for each gender.

Jul 8, 20 10:03 am  · 
1  · 
Jsilveira

I kinda thought so, but wanted to make sure. Thank you very much. This is the kinda thing I was looking for.

Jul 8, 20 10:23 am  · 
 · 
SpontaneousCombustion

Sorry if people aren't taking you seriously, but if you're for real: the thing is that your drawing is basically a contamination chamber.  That's not the way scrub rooms work.  With a scrub room staff is going from changing room to scrub room to sterile prep to OR, and then eventually out of there through a separate "dirty" series of wash and change rooms.  Their clean and dirty paths aren't crossing, and the air flows for all these rooms also do not mix. 

You could also use the analogy of "hot spaces" in the hazmat industry: you have hot, warm, and cold (or red, yellow, and green) levels of contamination, and you need to arrange travel and air flow so that contamination is collected and contained as much as possible in the hot zone, and that the order of travel is always from hot to warm to cold.  In your drawing you're sending all people who come from all directions into a small room that collects, shakes up, and redistributes contamination equally to all people, before you send them back out by the same path, to then continue on in all directions.

Jul 7, 20 4:08 pm  · 
2  · 
Jsilveira

Thank you. I appreciate your input. Yes, that is painfully obvious now.

Jul 7, 20 4:15 pm  · 
 · 
Jsilveira

Do you know of an example or set of guidelines on putting together a changing room like this?

Jul 7, 20 4:16 pm  · 
 · 
SpontaneousCombustion

There are many guidelines: codes, public health departments, AIA, healthcare associations, etc. Requirements for layouts, square footages, minimum air changes, humidity, temperature, chlorine content and temperature of the wash water, storage for clean and soiled clothing, acceptable finishes, etc. There are also consultants for all of this, if you don't have the experience to do the research and design yourself. What you're asking is beyond the free advice scope.

Jul 7, 20 4:24 pm  · 
1  · 
Jsilveira

Fair enough. Thank you.

Jul 7, 20 4:28 pm  · 
 · 

scrub room. decontamination room. very common element in certain designs like food production, etc...

Jul 7, 20 6:06 pm  · 
 · 
mightyaa

Easiest.  Uniform provider.  They pick-up and drop-off uniforms daily.  Then a locker/changing room. I've done this for vehicle service facilities, and seen them in hospitals, and food manufacturer's.  Basically the rule is if you are on 'the floor' working, you must be in uniform.  Keeps the pullovers clean, fresh and tidy.  

The flow is; come in the employee entrance, clock in, change, go through another set of doors to the floor, and work. Reverse at end of shift.  The room has shelves for different sizes for you to grab and put on, and a dirty clothes bin for when you finish the day.  Deliveries are similar; dock, a receiving room, then someone in one of those uniforms  sorts to proper storage area/bins, etc.   Reverse flow for exporting. Basically, no one in street clothes gets past the 'clean' side of a door.

Jul 7, 20 5:47 pm  · 
2  · 
Jsilveira

This is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for. Thanks.

Jul 7, 20 6:58 pm  · 
 · 

Block this user


Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?

Archinect


This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.

  • ×Search in: