Air Quality

Heat Recovery Ventilation System has been a common and in some places, mandatory, feature in homes throughout Scandinavia and Canada for many years.

For a building to be thermally efficient, it needs to be airtight. Every air leak diminishes the insulation value. Once the building is airtight, the problem arises where the air inside the home becomes stale and stagnant. The poor air quality creates an unhealthy indoor environment when combined with the off-gassing of manufactured products inside the home.

The home will also feel stuffy and uncomfortable, and condensation will form on the inside of windows, causing water to gather on the internal window frames.  The stale air environment also promotes the growth of mould throughout the house, due to excessive moisture in the air not being able to escape.

The solution to maintaining your insulation value, while still having fresh air circulating throughout the house, is not as easy as just opening a window.

On a cold night, your home has consumed energy (generally electricity) to make the indoor temperature comfortable. You open a window or two to allow some fresh air into the home. By the time an adequate amount of fresh air enters the home, the home has lost most of its warmth, and the heating process needs to start over. Vents throughout the house do little more than compromise insulation value.

The system

This system uses two fans. one fan draws the stale air out of the house through ports in the wet areas, the other fan draws fresh air in from outside, and distributes it into the bedrooms and living areas. The stale air leaving the house transfers its temperature to the clean air entering the house as they pass through a heat exchange box.

These units change the air completely in an average sized home in 3 hours, without losing large amounts of the valuable indoor air temperature.

This method solves the fresh air problem in airtight homes, as well as creating even temperature from one end of the house to the other. It removes dust and other particles from the air, as well as excess moisture and toxic gasses emitted from products inside the home. This continuous movement of fresh air, dries out wet areas, preventing the growth of dangerous moulds.

This fresh air environment  has been proven to improve the health of its occupants. People have been known to lose long term coughs and allergies after only months of installing a HRV in their home.

Without correctly addressing indoor air quality, the healthy, energy efficient home, is incomplete.

Although the solution to indoor air quality is a relatively old technology in other countries, it is seldom addressed at all in Australia, and rarely addressed properly.

We can advise on and install these units if you are looking to improve indoor air quality.