Whether you are buying a new home or taking care of the one that you have, proper ventilation is important because it helps protect your health and your home. It is critical to your comfort and safety as a reliable heating system or smoke alarm.
But what is the real reason behind why you need to ventilate?
For centuries homes are not ventilated, and somehow they have survived. There are several reasons that ventilation is more important today than it was a long time ago. Most importantly, houses 100 years ago are leaky. Usually, they did not have insulation in the walls, so fresh air could pretty enter easily through all gaps, cracks, and holes in the building.
VENTILATION OPTIONS
1. Exhaust Only Mechanical Ventilation
This is a relatively common strategy in which small exhaust fans, usually in bathrooms operate either continuously or intermittently to exhaust stale air and moisture generated in those rooms.
2. Supply Only Mechanical Ventilation
As the name implies, a fan brings in the fresh air, and stale air escapes through cracks and air-leakage sites in the house. A supply-only ventilation system pressurizes a house which can be a good thing in keeping random and other contaminants from entering the house.
3. Balanced Ventilation
Much better ventilation is provided through a stable system in which separate fans drive both inlet and exhaust airflow.
4. Balanced Ventilation with Heat Recovery
If there are different fans to introduce fresh air and exhaust indoor air, it makes sense a lot of sense to locate these fans together and include air-to-air heat exchanger so that the outgoing house air will precondition the incoming outdoor air.
All homes should have mechanical ventilation with better-insulated, tighter homes that ventilation is all the more critical. Even in a very leaky house, one can’t count on bringing in fresh air or calm days.
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