Balanced ventilation offers a substantial improvement over standard venting methods. Conventional options for household venting are either intake-only or exhaust-only. These methods bring in fresh air or remove stale air—but not both. This presents significant issues including such as making temperature control difficult and compromising indoor air quality.
Balanced ventilation methods resolve the problems posed by the one-way approach. As the name implies, these systems induct fresh, filtered outdoor air into the house while simultaneously exhausting an exactly equal amount of stale indoor air. This maintains balanced air pressure inside the house, the ideal environment for both healthy air quality and optimum cooling and heating performance and efficiency.
Two alternatives are available to balance ventilation in your home.
Heat Recovery Ventilation (HRV)
In an HRV system, blowers inside a central controller unit connected to dedicated, small-diameter ductwork draw in a metered amount of fresh outdoor air and distribute it into living spaces throughout the house. At the same time, an equal volume of stale air is pulled into the system and exhausted out of the house.
Where the intake and exhaust air streams pass through the central controller, a heat exchanger extracts heat from one and adds it to the other. In winter, heat removed from the outgoing exhaust stream is added to the incoming stream of fresh outdoor air to reduce temperature loss. In summer, the process reverses and heat is taken from incoming outdoor air and added to the outgoing stream to prevent heat gain.
Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV)
An ERV system includes all the advantages of an HRV plus humidity control. Humidity levels are an important factor in maintaining indoor comfort. In summer, the ERV incorporates an enthalpic humidity transfer process that extracts water vapor from incoming humid outdoor air and adds it to the outgoing exhaust air stream. Improved indoor humidity control enhances the cooling process and helps your air conditioner keep the house comfortable.
For more about the advantages of balanced ventilation to support indoor comfort and optimal air quality, contact the professionals at Energy 1 Heating & Air Conditioning.
Energy 1 Heating & Air Conditioning
1 (440) 246-5440
Serving the Lorain, OH Area