Heat Recovery Systems

Builderwoman!

Seriously thinking of installing Heat Recovery system - anyone heard of Ventaxia? Any tips, alterts or comments on heat recovery in general would be gratefully appreciated. Ta!

Mothman

Not in any particular order, except the order they come in my head.

Insulated ducting. Not much point have super efficient heat recovery if its going through cold ducting. I got uninsulated ducting and while some of it was under the roof insulation, some of it was not and I found it wasn't easy to effectively insulate it. Preinsulated ducting must be available, but maybe at a premium.

Sound travels through the ducting, and so there is potential to hear sounds the other end of house if there is a direct duct. Definitely worth bringing this up and seeing what measures are taken to reduce this.

Linked the mt last point, in my mother's house the inlet (diffuser) in a couple of the bedrooms were placed near the door. To me this would mean the freh air coming in and straight out the door and not circulating the room. Perhaps I'm wrong in this assumption. The reason given for locating the diffusers there was to reduce noise carry through.

My system has mufflers in it to reduce the noise from the system itself, and apart from the hum of the unit itself in utility room, I can't hear it.

You need to have a "summer" setting to bypass the heat recovery.

Check out power consumption of fans and filter cost replacement. My unit is using about 85w and the filters are recommended to be cleaned every 4 months or so and replaced every couple years or so. Filter cost I thought was high enough at approx €40 each, there are 2 in my system.

If I think of anything else I'll come back here.

Builderwoman!

Hi Mothman and thanks so much for your response. You know this heat recovery system is only an "after thought" as such as we did not have enough to cover it in the budget until we sold our house, which happened much much quicker than we thought. So therefore wavin pipes have already been put into the blockwork for vents. We were just talking last night that if we go the heat recovery route we will have to re-think hte whole venting issue.

What is the brand of your system? Do you mind me asking if it was expensive? Are you happy with it and pleased that you outlayed the money doing it? Does it act as a cooling system in summer?

Really appreciate your help and advice. Thanks for all the tips to date. You have given me some good questions to ask the plumber. This system is only new to him as well (he normally installs Veissman which is very expensive).

Looking forward to reading more posts from you.

thedesigntribe

Hi Mothman

Same questions as above, if your around:

What is the brand of your system?
Do you mind me asking how much did it cost?
Are you happy with it and pleased that you outlayed the money doing it?
Does it act as a cooling system in summer?

Mothman

thedesigntribe wrote:

Hi Mothman

Same questions as above, if your around:

What is the brand of your system?
Do you mind me asking how much did it cost?
Are you happy with it and pleased that you outlayed the money doing it?
Does it act as a cooling system in summer?

I have a Scandinavian Home and the ventilation system is a standard fit, although it is priced separately.
This is a price list on the sit linked above.

I have a 126sqm house with dormer and from the price list, the cost is €3632 inc VAT. Labour to install is indicated at just under €1000. It took 3-4 lads about a day to install, so that seems about right.

From the pricelist I can see that bigger house 160+sqm would cost c€5500 plus installation.

For further details of the system in my house this is a dedicated webpage in the site mentioned above.

The make of my unit is Temovex, the model being 480s

I've said before that I would not build a house without a ventilation heat recovery unit. To me a small price to pay for proper ventilation.

It is not an air conditioner unit, and will not cool the air coming in. So if the air temp is 25C outside, that is what it'll circulate into the house. Of course night temp temps drop and so this will get pumped in. But simply, from my experience it won't cool down the house as much as one usually expects, probably because of the huge amount of heat contained in the mass of the house.

And Builderwoman, sorry for not getting back here sooner.

CJhaughey

My mate and myself have just finished installing the same system as mothman, took 2 of us 1.5 days most of that was figuring out pipe runs.Actually joining the pipework together is pretty easy as it is all push fit with a rubber sealing ring inside the joint.
the most critical part (for us ) was installing the saddles that T off the main supply/extract pipes as these are a precise fit.
It isn't rocket science but it does need thinking about during installation.