February 18, 2026 at 9:36 am

Hyperbaric Suite – High Pressure Medical Air

Hello,

We have a facility that has a Hyperbaric Suite with (3) Chambers. Each chamber has O2, HP O2 (70-90psi), Med Air, and Med Vac. These gases are piped through a Zone Valve, and monitored with an AAP.

They also have HP Med Air (70-90 psi) that’s fed from a simplex Air Manifold located in a closet in the chamber room. This is piped over to wall outlets & strictly used to run the chamber vents – not patient respiration. They got written up on their annual survey that the room is not ventilated, relief is not piped outside, no source valve, etc. per NFPA. I don’t see anything in NFPA99 or FGI guidelines on this. My thought is if it’s not patient respiration, they wouldn’t need to meet all of those standards. Curious to hear what others might think?

  • Al Moon

    March 9, 2026 at 7:37 pm

    So / The medical air cylinders are piped to the hbo chamber, and during the ( i.e air brake ) the gas is inhaled by the hbo patient: This equals not inhaled ????????????

  • Zac Malewitz

    March 10, 2026 at 8:31 am

    Al, thanks for the response. Initially I was told one thing, but then spoke with the person that runs the department. He did inform me that the higher pressure is used to run the ventilators in critical care situations – therefore making it patient respiration & answering my questions. The manifold has been in use for 20-30 years and hasn’t been written up until now. He said they only use it once or twice a year so I was just seeing if someone had ran into this elsewhere or might have another idea to prevent them from having to purchase a new manifold, zone valve, alarms, manifold room, etc. I have seen other facilities that have a high pressure cylinder secured in the room with a regulator and hose to connect to the bed when needed as I’ve seen this in other Hyperbaric locations. Maybe they can go this route.

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