Want a warm and cosy house, but can’t stand a stuffy atmosphere? Do you live in a colder house because you want the fresh air but don’t care to heat the outside? Heat recovery ventilators are the answer. Here’s a shot of the ventilator that handles the ducting and air circulation for the main floor of house. We also have one for the upper floor, hung in the turret.
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This ventilator has four ports, 2 for fresh air supplied to the house from the outside, and 2 for stale air exhausted from the house. Typically, most ventilation for houses involves either air being forced into the house, or air being forced out of the house, but not both. What makes this setup different, energy efficient, and quite comfortable for the occupants, is that the air exchange is balanced, the unit itself contains a heat exchanger. This heat exchanger contains many very thin aluminum baffles through which both the supply air stream and the exhaust air stream pass, but without mixing. The warm, stale air being exhausted from the house passes its heat to the fresh, colder air coming into the house by means of these baffles, which act as heat conductors.
Here’s a ducting plan for the upper floor. If you want a more detailed view, click on the image to view the plan in greater detail. You can see from this plan that the intake air comes from the south side of the house, passes through the ventilator to pick up the warmth from the return air. It continues through to the three supply ducts, one located in the study and the other two in the master bedroom area. The return ducts draw air from the bathroom. The ventilator unit for the upper floor is smaller than the one for the main floor. It’s a FanTek.
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Here’s the ducting plan for the main floor. As with the upper floor, the intake air is drawn from the south side and passes through to four places in the main floor, one for each bedroom and one in the great room and parlor. Intakes are located in each bathroom and to the left of the main staircase to the master floor.
Between these two systems, the entire air content of the house is exchanged 3 times in a 24-hour period. The efficiency of these units is such that 85% of the heat ventilated is kept in the house. So, we get to have that lovely, fresh, air blowing off the coast into our house, but without the heat loss and cost of having an open window. Together, the units cost about $1600. With a radiant heated house like we are having, we were not required to do any sort of ducting, but we did this for the "green" factor, which will translate to heating bill savings over the years. It’s interesting to note that other folks in the area with recently built houses have commented that the houses built today are so tight that having a ducting system like this is a pretty good thing. We think so too.
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