Powerful Yet Simple Fresh Air Solutions
Energy Recovery Ventilation systems offer a smarter and modern way of ensuring constant fresh air supply, while maintaining the energy saving benefits of a more airtight home. Maintain a healthy and comfortable internal environment by constantly removing excess moisture and stale air, while supplying fresh and filtered outdoor air.
Why Do We Need Ventilation?
Still opening your windows to get fresh air, and wasting expensive energy? Opening windows has always been the simplest way to bring fresh air into your home. But when you open a window, you also let your carefully heated or cooled indoor air escape. This is why energy recovery ventilation is important in modern homes.
Mositure
A typical family home of 4 produces 12 litres of water every single day through basic life such as cooking, cleaning, washing, and simply breathing. In most houses, that moistures forms condensation on windows, inside walls, and causes a build up of mould and rot.
By properly ventilating, we can remove this moisture as it is generated, and dry the internal environment before the condensation can occur, and reduce the risks of mould and rot forming.
Fresh Air
Beyond moisture generation, homes build up other harmful substances and stale air. CO2, VOCs, cooking gases, and simply bad smells are especially problematic in more airtight and energy efficient homes. The build up of these is harmful to occupants, and can disrupt sleep and cause ongoing health issues.
Proper and continuous ventilation constantly removes the build up of these gases and brings in controlled and filtered outside fresh air.
Energy Savings
Ventilation can be simply achieved by opening windows and waiting for a breeze of air. This would undo all the hard work of insulating and making airtight our homes. It would allow for all the heated (or cooled) air which has been paid for to simply leak outside.
With properly designed, mechanical and heat recovery ventilation, we can minimise these energy losses and maintain comfortable internal environments while also purging internal air of excess moisture and contaminants.
What is Energy/Heat Recovery Ventilation
Energy Recovery Ventilation (ERV), or Heat Recovery Ventilation (HRV), allow for continuous ventilation of a space, while maintaining temperature and energy inside the house. This allows for a continuous stream of fresh air from outside, without the downside of losing any air-conditioning or heating to the outside.
There are several different mechanisms for this, but simply this occurs by passing the exhaust stale air through a heat exchanger while the incoming fresh air is being passed through on the other side of that same heat exchanger. In winter this would be warm but stale inside air warming up the incoming cold outside air, without physically mixing the air streams.
ERV vs HRV
ERV and HRV both allow for the exchange of heat from one airstream to another, while ERV adds on the ability to exchange the moisture or energy of the airstreams without mixing. In short, HRV only exchanges heat, ERV exchanges energy (moisture and heat). ERV is useful in extreme dry or humid climates, where you want to keep moisture on one side.
In dry climates this means, while reducing peak loads of moisture and moisture build up to avoid rot and mould inside, it doesn’t dry out the air to an uncomfortable level, maintaining a comfortable internal humidity.
In humid climates, the moisture from outside is rejected, limiting the ingress of outdoor humidity. While it won’t reject 100%, it aids in overall systems and helps to minimise the usage of dehumidifiers.
While both systems have their own upsides and downsides, we generally find that most ERV systems are more than capable in all situations, while HRV can have negative effects in more extreme climates, therefore we lean towards ERV for all situations.
Decentralised vs Centralised
Decentralised
Decentralised Ventilation is useful for retrofits and for builds where the ducting is difficult or impossible to run for a centralised system.
It is easily installed, and effective at targeting specific spaces and rooms while also being expandable to a whole house solution.
Centralised
Centralised Ventilation is the optimal approach. One large unit, with a duct network to every room. This ensures the whole house is able to receive even and balanced airflow.
Unlike decentralised, these units are able to exhaust from the bathrooms and wet area, removing the need for traditional extraction fans.
Unsure Which is Best For You?
If you are unsure if decentralised or centralised is the best fit for you, contact us and send through your plans or designs and we can work with you to find the best fit