Door Arrangement and a Method for Implementing Ventilation in connection with a Door Arrangement

The present invention relates to a door arrangement according to the preamble of Claim 1.

The invention also relates to a method in connection with a door arrangement.

The need to isolate the ventilation of rooms varies greatly due to requirements and possibilities. In practice, room-isolation solutions at the junctions between a clean and a so-called dirty room are very liable to become contaminated and the danger of impurities spreading is great, due to changes in pressure. Due to this, solutions are mainly tailored location-specifically and therefore very expensive. In addition, the junction points in question are technically difficult to implement and thus can only be brought into use slowly.

The creation of a negative and positive pressure in rooms often requires extensive building-technical operations, which are both expensive and slow to implement. Preparations, for example, for a so-called pandemic threat require both nationally and internationally considerable preparations for producing isolation rooms.

Civil-defence shelter requirements are in a significant state of change, as threats move away from the traditional bomb shelter to light interior rooms in the storeys of buildings, to protect the users from biological, chemical, and radiological threats. Rapidly installable, or preferably continuously protective, in practice unnoticeable isolation technology must be produced for these so-called light-protection solutions.

Asbestos legislation requires the construction of a negative-pressure sealing tunnel from the clean rooms to the so-called dirty rooms, i.e. to the room leading to the asbestos- removal area. Corresponding isolation is also required when demolishing structures suffering from moisture and fungal damage. An obstacle to the widespread use of dust- free renovation has been mainly the costs arising from it, primarily the expense of constructing functional and dust-safe room isolation. In the very near future, the building

sector in Finland expects a significant renovation boom affecting apartments, which will primarily concentrate on so-called bathroom renovations, due to renewal and repair requirements demanded by HPAC technology. Because the aim is to reduce the need for evacuation and avoidance during the renovation, financially and functionally practical technical solutions must be produced, which will permit the building users to remain in the immediate vicinity of the renovation work, without, however, subjecting them to the impurities created during renovation.

Carbon-dioxide content increases significantly as the density of people increases. Thanks to developing technology, a carbon-dioxide sensor can be installed in an incoming-air door, which is integrated to control the amount of additional incoming air being directed into the rooms through the door opening.

The decree of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health concerning smoking in restaurants and similar businesses requires that access to the smoking area should be arranged in such a way that tobacco smoke will not spread outside the area.

In particular, an attempt is made to isolate a room being renovated or repaired from other rooms, with the aid of various doors. Normal doors hinder access between a repaired room and a room not being repaired. Airtight revolving doors, on the other hand, are very large and expensive.

A negative pressure is often created in a room being repaired, so that humidity or dust will not move to the side of the room not being repaired. In such cases, all the access openings must be relatively tight, so that dust and humidity will not move from the room being repaired to other rooms. According to the prior art, the negative pressure is generally formed by means of a separate ventilation unit and both the exhaust and intake routes are implemented using traditional ventilation-technology ducts. Such solutions involving duct runs lead to high costs.

In the prior art, so-called flap doors are also known, which permit access through a door opening, without the door having to be actively opened. Door arrangements of this kind are disclosed in, among others, US patent 4095642 and WO publication 03/075722. As

such, these door arrangements permit movement, but are not as tight as normal doors. These door types also demand normal installation work.

The invention is intended to eliminate the defects of the prior art described above and for this purpose create an entirely new type of door arrangement and an air-conditioning method in connection with the door arrangement.

hi general, the invention is intended to create a technology, with the aid of which it will be possible to produce a functional air-control technology for room isolation. The primary intention is to prevent the spread of impurities from contaminated areas to so- called clean rooms. The intention is to create, with the aid of the invention, products that will operate at either a positive, negative, or neutral pressure, depending on the purpose. In addition, the intention is to integrate the ventilation of the isolated room in such a way that it will react to changes in air pressure, and thus, together with the aid of developing technology, will continuously ensure the creation of the desired atmospheric conditions.

The invention is based on creating a door arrangement, which comprises a light- construction curtain arrangement that nevertheless prevents the passage of air, through which it is possible to move without opening the door. A feed-through arrangement for creating a negative or positive pressure and for possible other feed-throughs, is connected to this curtain arrangement.

The feed-through arrangement is preferably in the upper part of the door arrangement.

More specifically, the door arrangement according to the invention is characterized by what is stated in the characterizing portion of Claim 1.

The method according to the invention is, for its part, characterized by what is stated in the characterizing portion of Claim 9.

With the aid of the invention, it is easy to implement a door solution, with the aid of which it is possible to create a negative or positive pressure in a desired location, typically in a room or part of a building. However, the door arrangement permits easy

movement through the door and, thanks to the easy attachment, the door arrangement can be attached at low cost. Thanks to its construction, the door arrangement is suitable for access openings of different widths, typically for doors.

The invention is suitable for demolition sites, sites requiring drying, renovation sites, repair sites, sites to be protected, isolation rooms, the construction of clean rooms, and also as an aid for dust-free repair and new building.

In the following, the invention is examined with the aid of an example according to the accompanying drawings.

Figure Ia shows the door arrangement according to the invention, seen from the side of the pressurization duct.

Figure Ib shows a horizontal section of Figure Ia.

Figure 2a shows the door arrangement according to the invention, seen from the opposite side to that in Figure Ia.

Figure 2b shows a horizontal section of Figure 2a.

Figure 3 shows a vertical section of Figure 2a, seen from the left-hand side.

According to Figure Ia, the door arrangement is typically formed from two parts: a frame piece 1, which is, for example, of metal, and door-curtain flaps 6, attached to the frame piece 1, which are typically of transparent plastic. The door-curtain flaps 6 are located tightly next to each other and are flexible and impenetrable by gas. Their length is arranged in such a way that, when the door-curtain arrangement is in place, the flaps extend as close as possible to the floor surface. The door-curtain flaps can also overlap each other slightly. The metal frame 1 is typically open on the inside and the flows through it are implemented with the aid of the connection 2 of the negative-pressure duct and the opening arrangements 3 shown by broken lines. Figure Ia also shows a connection opening 4 for a possible extractor. If an extractor is not used, the connection

opening is closed off. According to Figure Ib, the metal frame element is located on the side of the door opening that has the negative-pressure-duct connection 2.

The frame piece 1 is preferably surrounded by a seal 15, which uses negative pressure to seal the upper edge of the door opening against the surrounding wall 8 (Figure Ib).

Typically, a gap 13, is formed between the flaps 6 and the floor surface 16, the size of which, as well as the tolerance 14 of the junction of the flaps 6, is used to adjust the flow of replacement air to the isolated room and the pressure difference between the isolated room and the area outside it.

The size of the gap 13 can be adjusted, for example, by means of the arrangement shown in Figures Ia and 2a, in which the flap 6 is made clearly shorter than the standard door height and equipped with a row of holes 11. An extension piece 10 is attached to this flap by means of attachment pieces 12 such as rivets, bolt-nut pairs, or similar, fitting the holes, in such a way that the desired tolerance 13 is achieved for all door heights. In the figures, the extension arrangement is shown for only a single flap 6, but naturally there is such an arrangement in all the flaps 6.

According to Figure 2a, the exhaust-air openings 3 open onto the side of the room being processed and on this side is also situated an adjustable quick-attachment arm 5, by means of which the frame piece 1 is supported on the frames 7 of the door opening, Figure 2b. Due to the quick-attachment arm 5 the door arrangement can be attached to doors of different widths. If necessary, if there are great differences in the widths of the doors, the quick-attachment arm 5 can be suitably connected to the door-curtain flaps and adjust their width transversely. In the case of narrow doors, the flaps will then partly overlap and when the flaps 6 are adjusted for wider door openings, this overlapping will be reduced or entirely eliminated.

The quick-attachment arm 5 can be of the telescopic type according to the figure, whereby the adjustment can be implemented by means of a longitudinal thread. In this case, the term telescopic type refers to an elongated construction formed by rods inside each other, the cross-section of which is, for example, a circular, rectangular, square, or triangular. Alternatively, the telescopic attachment arm can contain separate locking

using transverse screws. Alternatively, the quick-attachment arm 5 can be of a concertina type.

One alternative for the quick-locking of the quick-attachment arm 5 is a spring-loaded lever arrangement, in which in the locking position of the spring is tensioned and when released from the locking position the quick-attachment arm 5 is pressed against the door frames by the force of the spring.

According to Figure 3, most of the frame 1 is outside the room being cleaned or repaired and only the air openings 3 open onto the side of the room being cleaned. In addition, the quick-attachment arm 5 extends into the area of the frame 7. Figure 3 does not show the alternative, in which longer tubes are connected to the air openings 3, in order to move the suction effect deeper into the room being cleaned or repaired. Also, all of the openings can be advantageously made into extension suction tubes, in order to avoid possible flow short circuits directly from the suction tubes to the gaps in the upper edge of the flaps 6.

Within the scope of the invention, the unit 1 can be equally well on either side, relative to the room being repaired, dried, or renovated.

Either negative or positive pressure can be created in the target room, according to the direction in which it is wished to create an airflow. For example, in the final stage of repair work, or in connection with painting work, the room being renovated or repaired can be over pressurized to prevent dirt from entering the room in question.

The term installation of essentially airtight flaps 6 refers in the present application typically to a tolerance of 0 - 3 mm in the boundary surface 14 of the flaps 6. On the other hand, if the gap 13 at the lower edge is sufficiently large, the flaps 6 can even overlap.