Improve Your HVAC Results and Cincinnati Home With a Heat Recovery Ventilator
by Greg Leisgang on October 29, 2013
Posted in: Ventilation
One of the best methods to achieve lower HVAC bills in your Cincinnati home is to seal it up nice and tight. The only problem with a tightly sealed home is that pollution and moisture generated indoors get stuck there. This leads to poor indoor air quality and worsened allergy and asthma symptoms. The solution to this problem is a heat recovery ventilator.
Sometimes called an HRV, a heat recovery ventilator is essentially a balanced ventilation system that uses the heat from stale, outgoing air to preheat fresh, incoming air. Balanced ventilation is the best type available, since it keeps your home at the same pressure as the exterior.
The major difference between a standard balanced ventilation system and an HRV is the heat-exchange core. This effectively transfers heat the same way your car’s radiator transfers heat from the coolant to the outdoor air. It’s essentially a box made up of narrow alternating passageways. Incoming air passes through half of these passages while outgoing air passes through the other half. As the air streams flow next to each other, they never mix, but up to 85 percent of the heat from the outgoing air is transferred to the incoming air.
The ability to recover heat is what makes an HRV such a better solution than simply opening a window, especially on a bitter cold winter day in Cincinnati. In this way, an HRV lets you save energy and gives your HVAC system a break.
Typical heat recovery ventilators for residential applications move up to 200 cubic feet per minute (cfm) of air, but you can customize the airflow to meet your needs. The important thing to consider is that the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) suggests at least 15 cfm per person and .35 air changes per hour. At that rate, everyone inside is breathing brand new air every three hours.
To learn more about how heat recovery ventilators improve indoor air quality and boost HVAC results, please contact the professionals at JonLe Heating & Cooling. We are proud to serve residents in the Greater Cincinnati area.
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