Indoor environment was studied widely in HYGTECH projects including water, surfaces and indoor air. Research was carried out in various Living Lab real estates; office building, hospital, kindergarten, detached house, rental apartments for elderly people and school. Microbiological and technical aspects were focused on and in addition user surveys were done. Products and solutions related to hygiene in indoor environment were studied and based on the results business concept of hygienic indoor environment was started to compose. As a HYGTECH projects’ spin-off one business alliance, HygTech Alliance, was born.
The research partners of Hygtech project were Satakunta University of Applied Sciences; University of Turku, Turku School of Economics and Tampere University of Technology. The project was funded by the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes), currently called Business Finland. These two projects were called Hygiene concept for real estates – HYGTECH (2/2012-7/2013) and HYGTECH2 – Solutions to Manage Hygiene in Indoor Environment.
Results: The microbiological effects of copper in touch surface environment were studied at different real-life facilities under varying environmental circumstances (e.g. usage profiles, cleaning). Copper showed antibacterial properties with varying real-life circumstances. Thus, its usage as an antibacterial touch surface material can be recommended especially for small frequently touched items that were shown to possess the highest microbial counts. Based on this study, copper pipelines showed similar characteristics to cross-linked polyethylene (PEX) pipelines without antibacterial properties in drinking water systems.
