Heat recovery ventilation

We have media filtration.

Humidity control, we have ventilating dehumidifiers, we have ERVs, HRVs.

That's kind of the list when it comes to those four pillars of indoor air quality.

Telling people to stop storing paint in their crawl space, take it out to the shed, or find a better place for it.

And actually, that's really valuable because that can inform the level of tightness techniques that you employ and also the ventilation system as well.

And you may find on a house, on a retrofit, that actually you've already got really good air tightness and that just the activities that you're going to do, wall insulation, for example, could significantly improve, make the air tightness better to the point where the air tightness is so good that you will need a mechanical, like MVHR, heat recovery ventilation, or kind of some whole house ventilation system.

So yeah, it's worth getting that understanding up front if you can.

Yeah, brilliant.

On speaking of that humidity, about the HRV or the energy recovery ventilator.

I- in the Philippines, one of the challenges, ERV has been existing in the Philippines, but only for commercial For residential use, it's com- not being practiced.

Right.

And, yeah, we've been communicating ERV, it will control your humidity, and so on.

So yeah.

So that's what of...

That is one of the best, easiest, freest ways that we can start to kind of take back a little bit of control over our environment, or at least temp- ha- provide temporary relief.

Um, but, um, a- as far as a solution to that, one of the things I recommend to people is an ERV system a lot of times can be really helpful.

Uh, it brings in a little bit of air from the outside, filters it, dehumidifies it, and then blends it with the HVAC air so you have this kinda nice, uh, cycle of fresh air into the system.

I've seen it tamp down and lower CO2 levels for a lot of folks.

So we can deliver heating, cooling, balanced energy recovery ventilation, heat pump, domestic hot water, And we've also integrated and developed our own cloud-based control and monitoring system over the top of all of that.

So we take and incorporate and translate the data from each of those individual products, the heat pump, the ERV, hot water, et cetera, and have tied them all into a... control and monitoring system that can be viewed from anywhere that has Wi-Fi or internet access.

This helps particularly with the long-term performance, monitoring maintenance, and also automated and manual control options for changing from heating to cooling or adjusting temperature settings, maintenance reminders, fault detection.

All of those is now incorporated into this single package as well.

So this is where active ventilation comes into play through mechanical means.

Now when it comes to mechanical ventilation, you'll often hear this acronym MVHR.

So what is it and how does it work? Well, MVHR is mechanical ventilation with heat recovery.

Sometimes it's also called HRV for heat recovery ventilation.

And to quote the fantastic resource renew.org.au, they say mechanical ventilation with heat recovery or MVHR is used to deliver reliable ventilation to maintain excellent indoor air quality in occupied buildings.

It supplies fresh filtered air into the building and simultaneously extracts damp, stale or contaminated air without the energy, comfort or noise issues that can arise with open windows.

Mechanical ventilation can be thought of as providing continuous fresh air in a controlled manner.

That is, you can know exactly how much fresh air you're getting with mechanical ventilation, unlike when relying upon opening windows.

So we're basically a plumbing here, renewable company covering all aspects of anything from plumbing, heating in terms of air source heat pumps, gas boilers, oil boilers.

And then we do the likes of air conditioning, MVHR and such like.

So how does that tally in with the eco?

Renewable technology.

You can also use fans to accelerate the air transfer into or out of that window.

If it's really cold or really hot outside, that becomes more difficult, so you can use a system called an energy recovery ventilator or an ERV, and most of those right now are whole home systems that involve renovation, which is not the direction that a lot of people wanna go.

However, there are some interesting new products out there that I've been aware of and have been testing that are the equivalent of a window air conditioner but for energy recovery ventilation that could make it accessible for folks to have better ventilation that's better suited for particularly cold months or particularly hot months without needing to do a full renovation.

But right now, uh, your best bet is if you can open a window, that's the simplest.

If you can use a bathroom fan, that is also fairly effective.

And then the gold standard if you really want a comprehensive ventilation solution for your home is an ERV system.

Do I need to open two windows for airflow reasons, or is it just one window's enough?

Two is preferable, but one is usually sufficient.