Energy Recovery Ventilators Deliver Fresh Air And Control Humidity

Energy recovery ventilators (ERV) solve one of the paradoxes of today’s homes: As energy efficiency increases, indoor air quality declines. Airtight structures reduce heating and cooling costs at the price of natural ventilation. The lack of fresh air exchange means interior air stagnates and indoor pollutants accumulate. What gets into your air in these homes stays in your air.

Occupants of houses with inadequate ventilation often receive doses of pollutants inside that exceed outdoor air pollution. Energy recovery ventilators are a relatively new technology that adds fresh, filtered outside air to the home while removing stagnant air without cooling or heating loss.

Here’s how energy recover ventilators work:

• Utilizing dedicated ductwork, blower fans in the central ERV unit draw stagnant air out of rooms like kitchens and laundry rooms while delivering fresh outdoor air to bedrooms and living rooms. An ERV removes the exact volume of air from the home as it replaces, maintaining the important neutral air pressure balance inside the house.

• As the incoming and outgoing ducts pass parallel to each other through the central unit, a heat exchanger situated between the two airstreams extracts heat and moisture from the outgoing air and adds it to the incoming air during winter. During the summer, the ERV removes heat and moisture from the incoming air and adds it to the outgoing airstream so fresh air entering the home is cool and dry. An ERV is able to transfer over 70 percent of the energy from one air stream to the other.

Energy recovery ventilators typically consume about 150 watts of electricity. However, since they extract heat and humidity from incoming air, some of the cooling load on the central air conditioner, which consumes far more electricity, is reduced. This provides fresh air ventilation to the home while allowing the A/C to run shorter cycles, saving energy.

Sobieski Services provides local homeowners the latest technology like energy recovery ventilators to safeguard indoor air quality. Our goal is to help educate our customers in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC & plumbing systems).