During a cold Calgary winter, homeowners need to balance the need for ventilation with high energy costs, and using a heat recovery ventilator (HRV) can help ensure both.
A heat recovery ventilator is essentially a home-air management system. It uses existing ductwork to distribute fresh incoming air, while exhausting old stale air. You can also install an HRV if your home doesn’t have existing ductwork by using newly installed direct ductwork.
Here’s how it works:
- The HRV has a fresh-air duct, which directly connects to the duct that returns air to the furnace. This is how the home is supplied with fresh air.
- The air passes through a filtration system before it enters the home.
- Once the air is filtered, it passes through to the core of the HRV.
- Here, a circulation fan disperses air into the home’s general ductwork system.
- At the same time that the fresh-air supply process is at work, the HRV simultaneously circulates air out of the home via a completely separate duct system, existing air is drawn into the HRV.
- That air passes through a filter, then the heat-exchanger at the center of the HRV.
- The system preserves energy (or heat) from the return channel for reuse.
- Stale, old air is exhausted out of the house.
The most important factor in this process is that the two streams of air never combine, so there’s no chance for polluted indoor air to enter the stream of fresh incoming air — only the heat is transferred.
In this way, HRVs help to circulate air throughout your home, providing an extra measure of filtration each time the air passes through the system. Because it can reuse heat, the cost of using the HRV is offset. In fact, National Resources Canada estimates that HRVs can reuse up to 80 percent of exhausted heat.
Get better control over your home’s ventilation, while managing energy bills, with a heat recovery ventilator. Arpi’s Industries can help you select and install a ventilation system, ensuring better home comfort and stable energy bills. Just contact us today to get started! We’ve been serving homeowners in Greater Calgary for almost 50 years.
Our goal is to help educate our customers about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about heat recovery ventilators and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
Arpi’s services Calgary, Alberta. Visit our website to see our special offers to get started today!
