Air Changes per Hour Calculator

Knowing how to calculate air changes per hour can be helpful, especially if you want to know how often you receive a new load of fresh air from your air device. With this air change per hour calculator, you can easily determine how often the whole room air is exchanged: all you need to know beforehand is the area and height of your room and the CFM of your air device.

Scroll down to find an explanation of what ACH is all about and what values you should aim for. We'll also explain the air changes per hour formula.

ACH stands for air changes per hour and provides information on the hourly ratio of air exchanged within a room. Generally, ACH should vary between 4–30 depending on the type of room and its purpose. Higher ACH should be granted for:

• Closed spaces — garages, manufacturing halls
• Spaces with increased humidity — kitchens, bathrooms
• Gathering places — malls, conference rooms, classrooms
• Rooms storing temperature- and humidity-sensitive materials and products — storage houses, pharmacies
• places of increased infection risks — hospitals, laboratories

Thus, the question of how to calculate air changes per hour is a practical matter in various settings.

Knowing the ACH for a given space can be relevant in many ways. Proper ventilation substantially influences our well-being and health, as air pollutants and microbes do not remain within one area, since that air is being exchanged. Some spaces, such as kitchens and bathrooms, require more ventilation and thus a higher air exchange ratio, but also public areas, such as hospitals and schools, need to be adjusted to the higher exposure to people and germs. Higher usage of O₂ and the consequential higher emission of breathing CO₂ is an important factor in this context, which you can also access with our CO₂ breathing emission calculator. A proper ACH ratio is, therefore, crucial to ensure good air quality and properly regulate humidity.

Before we come to the formula for calculating air changes per hour, let's get familiar with the variables needed for this kind of calculation:

1. Since you want to calculate air changes per hour for a particular room, you will need to know its volume.

2. The next step is to check the airflow rating of your air device. It is usually given in cubic feet per minute (CFM) or cubic meters per minute and is the standard metric for airflow. If the airflow is given in different units, change them first before entering the value.

3. That's it! Our tool immediately computes ACH based on your input.

To compute ACH by hand, follow these steps:

1. Determine the volume of the room

• If you know its area, you need to multiply it by the height of the ceiling.
• If you do not know the area, measure the length and width of your room and multiply them together to get the area.

2. Adjust CFM

• To calculate the value for the air exchange per hour, you will need to multiply the CFM of your device by 60 (because 60 minutes = 1 hour).

3. Calculate ACH

• Finally, divide the adjusted CFM value by the room volume.

In a nutshell, we have the following formula for air changes per hour: