With winter on the way in Dover, DE, homeowners needs to consider every option in keeping their houses as energy efficient as possible. The better your home can retain its warm air – or cool air in the summertime – the more money you save on monthly energy bills and the less strain you put your heater and air conditioner under. There’s plenty of simple steps to improve your home’s energy efficiency, but one you might not have considered is an energy recovery ventilator (ERV) placed in your attic. We’re provided a quick outline of how it all works.
Ventilation without Loss of Temperature
The central purpose of an energy recovery ventilator is to swap out the stale air in your home with fresh air from outside, without losing the warmth (or coolness) your heater or air conditioner have worked so hard to provide. This is true year ‘round, but bears especial importance in the winter, when we shut out homes up tight to retain the heat. All of that stale air can force your heater to work harder to do its job – lowering humidity to unacceptable levels and forming a breeding ground for germs and bacteria to circulate endlessly. An ERV fixes that by linking two vents – one blowing fresh air in and the other blowing stale air out – to a heat exchanger in your attic. The air doesn’t co-mingle, but the heat exchanger pulls the heat out of the outgoing air and into the ingoing air.
What You Can Expect
As a result of this exchange, your air is refreshed and yet your household temperature remains the same. Even better the load on your heating system is reduced considerably, which means it doesn’t need to run as long to retain the warm temperatures in your home. Your monthly rates go down and your system doesn’t suffer from as much of a risk of a breakdown.
Atlantic Refrigeration and Air Conditioning, Inc. installs and services energy recovery ventilators.