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One of the jobs we do for our customers is to help their homes enjoy better air quality. Indoor comfort is about more than controlling the temperature with an air conditioner and a heater. It\u2019s also about keeping the air fresh and humidity under control with excellent ventilation.<\/p>\n
But how can you properly ventilate your home during extremely hot and cold days? Opening windows and doors just isn\u2019t a good solution because it ruins all the work your AC or heater is doing and makes you uncomfortable. Do you just have to accept stale indoor air on those days?<\/p>\n
Not at all! This is why we recommend you look into getting an energy recovery ventilator installed in your home\u2019s HVAC system.<\/p>\n
An energy recovery ventilator (ERV for short) is a device our HVAC experts can install in your home that allows you to enjoy fresh air circulation without giving your heating or cooling system a lot of extra work. An ERV brings in fresh outdoor air, but it either pre-cools or pre-heats it before it reaches the rooms. This keeps the rest of the HVAC system running efficiently while you enjoy better air quality.<\/p>\n
It sounds like an ERV would drain a lot of power to heat up or cool down the incoming air\u2014basically adding to the workload of the HVAC system\u2014we\u2019ve got good news for you. It\u2019s right there in the name: energy<\/em> recovery ventilator. What an ERV does is recover the energy the HVAC system already used to heat or cool the air inside the house and then uses that to pre-cool or pre-heat the air coming from outside.<\/p>\n The way an ERV does this is a process called counter-flow heat exchange<\/em>. The outside air current passes through a heat exchanger along with a current of air draw from indoors. Heat then moves from one current to the other. So on a hot summer day, the air from outside loses its heat to the cool air from inside. On a cold winter day, the air from outside gains heat from the hot air from inside. Around 80% of the energy originally used for cooling or heating is recovered this way and applied to the incoming fresh air.<\/p>\n Oh, there\u2019s something else we haven\u2019t mentioned yet. Moisture also moves between those air currents, and that means an ERV can help to balance indoor humidity. The air on a hot humid day will lose much of its humidity in the ERV before it reaches the house.<\/p>\nCall Our IAQ Professionals<\/h2>\n