Ground floor, 3,400 sq ft at 3.2 m. Scented: entrance and reception 300 sq ft, main waiting hall 560, corridor 260, café corner 160, administration 140 — 1,420 sq ft, 422 m³. Out of the sum: 1,980 sq ft of consultation, procedure, dressing, collection, dispensing, toilets and stores.
First floor, 2,600 sq ft at 2.9 m. Scented: lift and stair landing 150 sq ft, departmental waiting 380, corridor 240, back office 120 — 890 sq ft, 240 m³. Out of the sum: 1,710 sq ft, which is two thirds of that floor.
The machines: two Vaayus at ₹11,999 each, ₹23,998 together, same scent, same bottle, the upper one a step lower because 240 m³ is smaller than 422. Not one machine, and not one Aangan. Housekeeping and presentation only — no clinical claim of any kind.
2. Deduct on each floor, and notice that the upper floor deducts harder. Ground floor out of the sum: four consultation cabins, the dressing room, sample collection, pharmacy dispensing, the toilets, the cleaning store and the plant room — 1,980 of 3,400 square feet, which is 58 per cent. First floor out of the sum: six consultation cabins, two procedure rooms, day-care recovery, the laboratory, the sterile store and the toilets — 1,710 of 2,600, which is 66 per cent. Upper floors in polyclinics are usually more clinical and less public than ground floors, so the deduction is heavier and the volume that remains is smaller than people assume.
3. Convert each floor. Ground: 1,420 ÷ 10.76 = 132.0 m², × 3.2 = 422 cubic metres. First: 890 ÷ 10.76 = 82.7 m², × 2.9 = 240 cubic metres. For comparison, the undeducted sum on the same building is 1,011 cubic metres for the ground floor and 701 for the first, 1,712 in total, which is the number that gets an Aangan quoted into a polyclinic that does not need one.
4. Then do not add them together. 422 plus 240 is 662, which is 66 per cent of one Vaayu's rating, and it is a meaningless figure. A coverage rating describes how large a single continuous volume one machine can hold at a steady level. It is not an allowance you distribute around a building. A staircase in an enclosed core, with a fire door at each landing, is not a shared volume; neither is a lift shaft, which is a chimney with doors on it and moves air in one direction at a time. Put one machine on the ground floor of this building and the first floor gets nothing a patient could notice, regardless of what the total says.
5. So: two Vaayus, ₹23,998, one fragrance. One on the ground floor behind the reception desk, one on the first-floor landing where it opens into the departmental waiting area. Same scent in both, decanted from one 300ml refill so there is no batch difference between floors, and the upper unit set a step or two lower than the lower one because 240 cubic metres is a little over half of 422. Both on the same timer schedule through the app, both key-locked, both stopping at closing.
6. And the landing is the joint. The place this setup is judged is the eight seconds a patient spends stepping off the stairs or out of the lift onto the first-floor landing, because that is the only point in the building where they move from one machine's volume into the other's. If the scent changes there — different character, or noticeably stronger, or absent — the building reads as two buildings. Everything in the section below is about getting that joint right. Nothing on this page claims any clinical effect: the consultation rooms, procedure rooms, day-care recovery, dressing room, collection room, laboratory, dispensing counter and sterile store on both floors stay fragrance-free with their doors shut.
A portion of every order supports girl-child education through Nanhi Kali.
Why two floors are two volumes
This is the part of the arithmetic that people get wrong in the opposite direction to the clinical-room deduction, and the two mistakes often cancel each other out badly. Deducting nothing inflates the figure. Adding floors together then deflates the machine count. A polyclinic that makes both mistakes at once arrives at 1,712 cubic metres, decides that is one Aangan at ₹25,999 and buys a single machine for a building that physically cannot be held by one source. The three sections below set out what actually connects two volumes, what does not, and the one condition under which the Aangan is the right answer rather than the expensive one. If you are asking the broader version of this question, one diffuser per floor or one for the whole building is the same argument without a specific plan attached.
The worked table for 6,000 sq ft over two floors
Two floors, two subtotals, two heights and two machines. The rows are grouped by floor so that the subtotals stay apart, because the moment they are added together the answer changes and gets worse. The last two rows are the undeducted figures, which is what you will be quoted against if you hand a supplier the lease area.
| Zone | Floor area | Height | Cubic metres |
|---|---|---|---|
| GROUND · entrance, reception, main waiting hall, corridor, café corner, administration ★ | 1,420 sq ft | 3.2 m | 422 m³ |
| Ground · out of the sum: four consultation cabins, dressing room, sample collection, dispensing, toilets, cleaning store, plant | 1,980 sq ft | — | 0 m³ |
| FIRST · lift and stair landing, departmental waiting, corridor, back office | 890 sq ft | 2.9 m | 240 m³ |
| First · out of the sum: six consultation cabins, two procedure rooms, day-care recovery, laboratory, sterile store, toilets. Why each one | 1,710 sq ft | — | 0 m³ |
| Two volumes, separated by a stair with fire doors and a lift shaft | 2,310 sq ft scented | — | 422 + 240, never 662 |
| The machines: one Vaayu per volume, same scent | 2 units | both key-locked | ₹23,998 |
| The brochure sum, ground floor undeducted | 3,400 sq ft | 3.2 m | 1,011 m³ |
| The brochure sum, whole building undeducted — the figure that gets an Aangan quoted | 6,000 sq ft | 3.2 / 2.9 m | 1,712 m³ |
Vaayu · per volume₹11,999Shop → 
One bottle, both floors₹1,799Shop → 
Aangan · shared AHU only₹25,999Shop →
The landing as the joint, and the year costed
The landing is the only part of this installation that needs thought, so it gets the most of it. Site the first-floor machine on the landing itself, within two or three metres of where the lift doors open and the stair arrives, facing into the departmental waiting area rather than back at the lift. What you are trying to achieve is that a patient steps out of the lift into a space that already smells the way the ground floor did, at the same strength, so the transition is not an event. Three practical points. Keep it off the lift lobby wall directly opposite the doors, because the piston effect of an arriving car will push the plume straight back into the car and you will scent the lift, which nobody wants in a building where a patient may be in a lift with an oncology appointment. Give it a socket on the landing rather than running a lead across a circulation route. And if the landing is small — mine is 150 square feet, so 40 cubic metres — put the machine at the point where the landing opens into the waiting area rather than in the middle of the landing, so the waiting area is the volume being held and the landing simply catches the edge of it. On a floor where each speciality has its own sub-waiting area rather than one shared one, a multi-floor centre with a different speciality per floor deals with the extra wrinkle that departments may want different things and should not get them.
Then the settings, and the one rule that keeps two machines reading as one building. Same fragrance, same bottle, same schedule, and the upper machine one or two intensity steps lower than the lower one, because 240 cubic metres is a little over half of 422 and identical settings in unequal volumes produce unequal results. Buy one 300ml 300ml refill and fill both machines from it rather than buying two 100ml bottles, which removes any possibility of a batch difference between floors; it is a small thing and it is the kind of small thing that shows up as a patient saying the first floor smells different without being able to say how. Set one schedule in the app for both: start thirty minutes before the first appointment on each floor, stop at closing. If the first floor opens an hour later than the ground floor, use that — there is no reason to scent an empty landing. Calibrate by walking the route a patient walks, in order, once a day for three days: in through the entrance, across the waiting hall, up to the landing, into the departmental waiting area. You are listening for a change, not for a level. If the first floor reads stronger, drop it a step. If it reads absent, you have either sited it wrong or the landing door is doing more than you thought. Nobody turns either machine up because a floor got busy; busy is an air-change question and a three-floor centre with a consistent experience from entrance to top floor goes through the same discipline at a larger scale.
And the economics, which are simpler than the two-machine decision makes them sound. Two Vaayus are ₹23,998 against one Aangan at ₹25,999, so on capital cost the two-machine answer is ₹2,001 cheaper and it is also the one that actually works on a building with separate split systems per floor. Refills: a 400ml fill lasts about seventy-five days, so four fills per machine per year, eight 300ml refills at ₹1,799 is about ₹14,400 a year, and the upper machine on a lower setting in a smaller volume will use less than its share so call it ₹13,000 to ₹14,400. Electricity is 5 watts each, so two machines across a twelve-hour day and 310 days is roughly 37 kilowatt-hours or about ₹300 for the year. Year one is a little under ₹38,500 and the years after are around ₹14,700. Two more things worth saying for the person signing it. The two-machine answer gives you redundancy: if one unit goes back for service, half the building is still right rather than all of it being wrong. And neither machine holds standing water, which in a building running twelve hours a day across two floors would otherwise mean two reservoirs emptied, rinsed and dried daily by a named person — which is why the ultrasonic Sukoon at ₹1,899, Boond at ₹899 and Megh at ₹3,499 are not candidates for either floor's public space, and stay honest only in a back office where one person owns the routine. An alcohol-free reed diffuser from ₹749 is a reasonable thing to put on a first-floor back-office desk and will do nothing measurable on a 240 cubic metre landing.
The SOSA edit
The two-floor version compressed for a budget meeting: what to do, in what order, what it costs, and the two things that look like savings and are not. The machine count is decided at step three and not before.
| Step | What it is | When it earns its place | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. The free checks, both floors ★ | Trap round on every floor including the first-floor toilets, dressing-waste bin times, and the AC drain pan on both systems | Before any sizing. Upper floors with low-use toilets are where dry traps hide | ₹0 |
| 2. Two plans, two deductions | Strike out 1,980 sq ft on the ground floor and 1,710 on the first — 58 and 66 per cent respectively | Before measuring. The fragrance-free list applies floor by floor | ₹0 |
| 3. Convert per floor, never summed | 1,420 ÷ 10.76 × 3.2 = 422 m³; 890 ÷ 10.76 × 2.9 = 240 m³. Two volumes, two machines | A tape, two heights and an hour. The heights are different — measure both | ₹0–₹3,000 |
| 4. Two Vaayus, one scent | ₹11,999 each. Ground unit behind reception; first-floor unit on the landing facing the waiting area, a step lower, both key-locked | After steps 1 to 3. One 300ml 300ml refill filling both, one app schedule | ₹23,998 |
| 5. The year, in the facilities line | Eight 300ml refills and about 37 kWh across both units | At the next budget cycle, with one named person per floor | about ₹14,700 a year |
| The two false economies | One machine on the ground floor for the whole building, or one Aangan at ₹25,999 with no shared AHU to tie it into | Never. The HVAC question decides the second one, and the answer is usually standalone | — |
Versailles
The two-floor conversation I have most often starts with somebody who has done the arithmetic correctly and reached the wrong answer, which is a particular kind of frustrating. A polyclinic in Nashik sent me a very good spreadsheet. They had deducted every clinical room, used false-ceiling heights, and arrived at 662 cubic metres across two floors. Their question was why I was proposing two machines when their figure was comfortably inside one machine's rating, and it was a fair question. What I had to explain is that the rating is a statement about one volume, not a quantity of coverage you allocate. The analogy that landed was a ceiling fan: a fan rated for a 150 square foot room does not cool 150 square feet of a building, it cools one room of that size, and you do not buy half a fan for the next room.
The other thing I have learned to ask early is what is actually in the staircase. In a surprising number of buildings the fire doors have been wedged, propped or removed, and then the stair genuinely is a connector — at which point I am not pleased, because a wedged fire door is a serious problem that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the next inspection. I say so, and then we size for two machines anyway, on the basis that the doors will be working again shortly. It is one of the small ways this job turns into facilities management. The honest summary of this page is that it sells two machines where some pages in this cluster sell one, and the reason is not that two floors are twice the building. It is that a rating describes a volume, and a building that has two volumes has two of them whatever the total says.
Everything is made and supported from Pune, and a part of every order funds girl-child education through Nanhi Kali. You get a space that smells like somewhere looked after; a girl gets a classroom. That equation has always felt right to me.
Frequently asked questions
- Should a Polyclinic Buy One Diffuser Per Floor or One for the Whole Building? — the same question without a specific floor plan attached.
- How Do I Scent a Multi-Floor Medical Centre Where Each Floor Is a Different Speciality? — when each floor is a different speciality and wants something different.
- I Manage a Three-Floor Medical Centre and Want a Consistent Experience From the Entrance to the Top Floor — How Many Diffusers Would That Take? — three floors, one experience, and the machine count that takes.
- What Should a Multi-Speciality Clinic Fix Before It Spends Anything on Fragrance? — the free work on both floors before any of this.
- Brand: the SOSA founder story.
Facts verified November 2026: Product facts used in this guide. SOSA Vaayu Rs 11,999: waterless cold-air nebulising diffuser, no water reservoir, coverage up to 1000m3 (approximately 2,000-3,000 sq ft), 400ml refillable tank lasting up to about 75 days per fill, Bluetooth app plus onboard control, 1h/4h/8h/24h timer scheduling, adjustable intensity, under 38 dB, DC 12V/1A at 5W, 165 x 80.5 x 215 mm and 0.9 kg, freestanding or wall or HVAC mounted, auto-stop and key-lock, CE, RoHS and SGS certified, supplied with four hotel-inspired fragrances. SOSA Aangan Rs 25,999: HVAC-connected or standalone commercial nebulising diffuser, coverage up to 3,000m3 (roughly 8,000-10,000 sq ft), 800ml reservoir, metal body, programmable schedules, under 42 dB. Ultrasonic machines are water-based, hold standing water and consume 30-50 ml of water an hour: Sukoon Rs 1,899 (500ml, 270-320 sq ft, 16-18 hours on low, three 15ml Hotel Collection scents included), Boond Rs 899 (300ml), Megh Rs 3,499 (6 litres). Hotel Collection water-based fragrance 15ml Rs 299, 100ml Rs 999, 300ml Rs 1,799. Alcohol-free reed diffusers from Rs 749, requiring 24-72 hours to reach their working level. Free shipping above Rs 499. Coverage arithmetic: cubic metres equal floor area in square feet divided by 10.76 and multiplied by ceiling height in metres, counting only the volumes that are actually scented. This guide makes no medical, therapeutic or clinical claim of any kind for fragrance: a diffuser does not purify, disinfect or clean air, and does not treat, calm or affect any patient or condition. Fragrance is housekeeping and presentation. Clinical areas should be left fragrance-free, and a persistent odour should be traced to its source and corrected rather than covered. SOSA is not affiliated with or endorsed by any hotel brand. Prices subject to change - see the live product pages.