Heat Recovery & Whole House Ventilation

Between a third and half of an Irish building's heat loss typically occurs through cold air exchange. Heat Recovery Ventilation is a technology that, whilst having been in existence for some time, is now rapidly gaining recognition in Ireland as an extremely efficient, health-beneficial, cost effective solution to saving energy. Scandinavian in origin, the Heat Recovery Ventilation System (HRV), follows the unique approach to environmentally harmonised living the Scandinavians are renowned for.

A set of ducts extracts moist, stale air from the wet areas of the building such as the kitchen, laundry and bathrooms. This stale contaminated air travels through the HRV unit and is released outdoors; another ducting system then takes in fresh clean air from outside. As the two air-streams bypass within the centre of a non-energy consuming heat transfer exchanger, heat from the stale air is used to warm the fresh incoming air. As the two air-streams remain separate, no contamination occurs. Finally, the HRV unit succeeds in retaining up to 95% of the energy from the exhausted warm, stale air. This allows clean, filtered air to be distributed throughout the building - where and when needed. The majority of Heat Recovery Ventilation systems are also supplied with automatic humidity sensors that are able to augment the rate of ventilation when required, such as when a shower or bath is in use.

In contrast to conventional ventilation systems, a HRV is well advanced to offer year round comfort in the building, as while also drawing fresh air in it serves the dual purpose of keeping the living areas at a warm, constant temperature. More than 35% of heat loss in today’s homes can be attributed to ventilation, as where high-quality conventional systems are well equipped to handle the procedure of air exchange they tend to create an uncomfortably cold living environment in the process. This ultimately means that energy that might have been wasted in re-heating a naturally ventilated building can be saved with a HRV.