Did you know that these are the same thing?
I found this definition of an air to air exchanger. Our homes are being built more and more airtight, which is good for saving on heating fuel but a semi-disaster for humidity: Water vapor builds until it saturates the air and condenses into water, causing problems. An air-to-air heat exchanger exhausts that humid house air and takes in outside air, transferring the heat of the outgoing air to the incoming, so that little heat is lost. These became popular during the first energy crisis in the 1970s, when houses were tightened and new houses were very tight (too tight, in fact).
Here is what I found about Heat Recovery Systems. Maintaining fresh air in your home is important, but so is keeping energy costs from getting out of hand. In that case, heat recovery ventilation systems are important for your home. While air from the house is moved outside, a heat recovery system extracts the heat energy from the exhaust air and transfers it to the incoming fresh air. This can save you big in the winter, as the system helps maintain your home's temperature while still giving fresh air. It's especially helpful during the cold months to reduce the spread of sickness, without having to open windows and waste heat. The heat recovery systems can be bypassed during periods when warmed air is not desired in the house. Try it. Your lungs and wallet will thank you.
In an inspection today, one of my buyer clients had a plumbing/heating professional inspect a newly built house because the developed basement felt cold compared to the main floor.
So Brian Becker from Becker's Mechanical Services Ltd. did an inspection and here is what I learnt. Remember I am not a heating specialist but this is my Readers Digest version of what I learnt today.
In Regina, our climate varies a lot. Sometimes, like today for instance, it is something crazy like minus 25 Celsius with an added windchill making it something like minus one billion degrees and then our summer temperatures can sometimes be +30 degrees Celsius. Having such a large variance like this in our seasonal temperatures means that we should for the most part run our hrv/air to air exchangers only in the spring and autumn months when the temperature outside isn't such a big difference to the temperature inside our homes.
We suspect that someone had turned on the hrv in this new house and it was bringing in the extremely cold air into the house and was making the temperature so cold in the basement. You only need to run these hrvs when you've experienced steam/smells from showers, baths or cooking. The hrv's are meant to take out that steamy air and replace it with fresh air from outside. Some moisture is OK for us especially in winter when our furnaces run and our air is dryer than normal. But too much moisture could mean mold problems.
Hrv's, like almost everything else today, come with options. Obviously the more you spend, the more options that can be included, such as timers (which will run for approx. 20 minutes then automatically shut off).
