Modern insulating techniques have today’s homes sealed up more tightly than ever. While this is certainly good news for energy efficiency, it can be bad news for indoor air quality. Without adequate ventilation, stale, polluted air can be trapped inside your home with no way to escape, causing allergies to flare and making your living space feel stagnant and uninviting. Additionally, excess humidity can build up inside your home, potentially leading to mold growth and structural damage.
In the past, the traditional way of dealing with this problem was to simply open a window. However, as you can well imagine, this doesn’t do much for the energy efficiency of your home. Instead, a better solution is to install a heat recovery ventilation system. These systems use two separate fans working in unison to simultaneously blow stale, humid air out of your home while drawing clean, fresh air in from outdoors.
The two streams of air are moved through a series of aluminum chambers where they pass next to each other without mixing. As they pass, heat is transferred from the warm indoor air to the cool air from outdoors, essentially preheating it before it enters your home. This allows you to enjoy clean, fresh air without putting undue strain on your furnace.
Because these ventilation systems are able to recover the vast majority of heat from your indoor air, you should see only a slight drop in your home’s energy efficiency. In most cases, the benefit of improved indoor air quality coupled with the decreased risk of mold and rot makes the minor loss of efficiency worthwhile.
If you would like to learn more about heat recovery ventilation, contact us at Marsh Heating & Air Conditioning. We have been proudly serving the Twin Cities metro area since 1974, and look forward to working with you to find affordable, energy-efficient solutions for all your home’s heating and cooling needs.
Our goal is to help educate our customers about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about heat-recovery ventilation and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
Marsh Heating and Air Conditioning services Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Visit our website to see our special offers and get started today!