Author Topic: energy recovery ventilators  (Read 1657 times)

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strider3700

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energy recovery ventilators
« on: November 22, 2005, 08:22:20 PM »
My house has become more and more airtight thanks to the upgrades lately and I'm now starting to think that a source of fresh air being cycled through will do a lot to help with little issues like humidity and lingering smells that have only recently been noticed.


Looking into commercial units I found that they are around $600 cdn.   Now my basic thought is they are a fan to suck air from the inside into the unit and a fan to take air from outside into the unit and an air to air heat exchanger in the middle to do it's best at recovering the heat from the outgoing air.  Wrap that all up in a box and there you go.


So anyways unless heat exchangers cost way more then I figured I can't see these units as being worth that much.   So I'm thinking about building my own.


Now I've found lots of posts on water to water and water to air heat exchangers but I haven't seen much on air to air exchangers.   Is there an easy source of these or will I need to build my own?   If building my own my thought is the following


take a plate 12"x18" or so  

find some  copper 1/2" or maybe 1"  pipe and run it length wise down the pipe so that the entire plate is covered with pipe.   Attach another plate to the top.  Repeat this back and forth a few times until I have box of pipes.  I then need to come up with a way to alternate incoming and outgoing air through the layers and hopefully thats it.


Add some decent sized PC fans and some controls and away you go.  


Any one have any advice?

« Last Edit: November 22, 2005, 08:22:20 PM by (unknown) »