Best Way to Open Wind to Create Flow in House

Blog Postal service

6 Ways to Ventilate Your Home (and Which is Best)

How a green abode actually "breathes."

Should a green home require a slice of ventilation equipment like our  Zehnder HRV?

Photo: Alex Wilson

I of the features in our new business firm that I'm most excited about barely raises an eyebrow with some of our visitors: the ventilation organisation. I believe we have the highest-efficiency heat-recovery ventilator (HRV) on the marketplace—or at to the lowest degree it'southward correct up in that location virtually the pinnacle.

Why ventilate?

For centuries homes weren't ventilated, and they did all right, didn't they? Why do nosotros need to go to all this endeavour (and frequently considerable expense) to ventilate houses today?

There are several reasons that ventilation is more important today than it was long agone. Most chiefly, houses 100 years ago were really leaky. Usually they didn't have insulation in the walls, so fresh air could pretty hands enter through all the gaps, cracks, and holes in the building envelope.

Also, the building materials used 100 years agone were generally natural products that didn't consequence in pregnant offgassing of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), formaldehyde, flame retardants, and other chemicals that are then prevalent in today's edifice materials, effects, and belongings.

Ventilation options

Ventilation can accept many different forms. Very mostly, systems can be categorized into nigh a vi generic types:

A ventilation organisation schematic from the Building Scientific discipline Corporation fact sheet on counterbalanced ventilation.

Image: Building Science Corp.

• No ventilation. This is almost certainly the virtually common choice in American homes. There is no mechanical organisation to remove stale indoor air (and wet) or bring in fresh outside air. In the distant past, when buildings weren't insulated, this strategy worked reasonably well—relying on the natural leakiness of the firm. It'south worth noting, though, that even a leaky house doesn't ensure good ventilation. For this strategy to work at that place has to be either a cakewalk outside or a significant difference in temperature between outdoor and indoors. Either of these conditions creates a pressure deviation between indoors and out, driving that ventilation. On at-home days in the spring and summertime, in that location might be very piffling air exchange even in a really leaky house.
• Natural ventilation. In this rather uncommon strategy, specific design features are incorporated to bring in fresh air and get rid of stale air. One approach is to create a solar chimney in which air is heated past the lord's day, becomes more buoyant, and rises up and out through vents most the height of the edifice; this lowers the force per unit area in the house, which draws fresh air in through especially placed inlet ports. The residual of this blog post will focus on mechanical ventilation.
• Exhaust-merely mechanical ventilation. This is a relatively common strategy in which small exhaust fans, usually in bathrooms, operate either continuously or intermittently to frazzle dried air and moisture generated in those rooms. This strategy creates a small negative pressure in the house, and that pulls in fresh air either through cracks and other air-leakage sites or through strategically placed intentional make-upwardly air inlets. An advantage of this strategy is simplicity and low cost. A disadvantage is that the negative force per unit area can pull in radon and other soil gases that nosotros don't want in houses.
• Supply-only ventilation. As the name implies, a fan brings in fresh air, and dried air escapes through cracks and air-leakage sites in the house. The air supply may exist delivered to 1 location, dispersed through ducts, or supplied to the ducted distribution system of a forced-air heating system for dispersal. A supply-just ventilation system pressurizes a house, which can be a practiced thing in keeping radon and other contaminants from entering the house, simply it risks forcing moisture-laden air into wall and ceiling cavities where condensation and wet problems can occur.
• Balanced ventilation. Much improve ventilation is provided through a counterbalanced system in which separate fans drive both inlet and frazzle airflow. This allows us to control where the fresh air comes from, where that fresh air is delivered, and from where frazzle air is fatigued. Balanced ventilation systems can be either point-source or ducted. With ducted systems, it makes sense to deliver fresh air to spaces that are most lived in (living room, bedrooms, etc.) and exhaust indoor air from places where wet or pollutants are generated (bathrooms, kitchen, hobby room).
• Balanced ventilation with heat recovery. If there are separate fans to introduce fresh air and exhaust indoor air, it makes a lot of sense to locate these fans together and include an air-to-air estrus exchanger then that the outgoing house air will precondition the incoming outdoor air. This air-to-air heat exchanger—more ordinarily referred to today as a rut-recovery ventilator or HRV—is the mode to become in colder climates. A slightly different version, known as an energy-recovery ventilator (ERV), doesn't transfer moisture (oftentimes an advantage when a house would get too dry in the winter or too humid in the summertime).

I'm a business firm laic that all homes should have mechanical ventilation. With better-insulated, tighter homes, that ventilation is all the more than important. But fifty-fifty in a very leaky house, one tin't count on bringing in much fresh air or at-home days in the leap and fall when there isn't a pressure differential across the building envelope.

If budgets allow, going with balanced ventilation is strongly recommended, and if yous're doing that in a relatively cold climate, like ours, then providing heat recovery is a no-brainer. Mechanical ventilation always takes free energy; with estrus recovery the energy penalty of fresh air is minimized.

Alex is founder of BuildingGreen, Inc. In 2012 he founded the Resilient Design Found.

Published Feb 5, 2014 Permalink  Citation

(2014, Feb five). 6 Ways to Ventilate Your Habitation (and Which is Best). Retrieved from https://world wide web.buildinggreen.com/blog/6-ways-ventilate-your-home-and-which-all-time

Also on BuildingGreen

Explore the archives

allenthadons1992.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.buildinggreen.com/blog/6-ways-ventilate-your-home-and-which-best

Share this post