Energy Recovery Ventilation

An energy efficient fresh air supply system should be part of your design.  Because your foamed house is going to be very tight, fresh air must be supplied to ensure high indoor air quality (IAQ).  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends one full air exchange every three hours.

Customers often ask us if their foamed house is going to be too tight.  The answer is no – a house cannot be too tight but it must be ventilated correctly.  Only by making the house tight can we control the indoor climate and air quality appropriately.

We recommend the use of a heat or energy recovery ventilator (HRV or ERV).  These systems exhaust stale indoor air and replace it with fresh filtered outside air.  In doing so, they use the energy in the stale air to precondition the incoming air.  An HRV deals with heat only, while an ERV also preconditions the moisture level.  HRV/ERV systems are extremely energy efficient.  The best of them reuse up to 95 % of the energy while requiring less operating power than a 40 watt light bulb.