HRV revisit

[wingedfish]

Originally Posted by Coleus

WingedFish, normally how much do you charge for just installation? It seems like in Calgary, installer charge roughly 1K

Depends on the job, some are quick with a mechanical room on an outside wall and don't need it pretty. Some are not.

Originally Posted by Coleus

also it has defrost port which i don't know if it is that useful.

The defrost is needed for when your moist humid stale air freezes to the heat exchanger. this will block the air exchange in cold weather, the real time to need it. For a reefer, a defrost mechanism is a must.

[mark0933]

Originally Posted by wingedfish

FYI, personaly I run 150 gallons of water in a 1000 sq foot 77 bilevel in one of the coldest climates in Canada, can buy wholesale and install myself, and still cannot justify the cost to benefit for an HRV. My house sits just over 50% humidity and for a few weeks a year I cannot see out the picture window do to condensation humidity issues. I live with it. If you or your family suffers from health effects do to airquallity issues, or your humidity runs higher than what you want, your cost to benefit ratio will sway to the hrv side. I would suggest that you research how they work and understand the benefits and pitfalls of the inherent design and compare to what your expectations are. No question they are a better investment than a dehumidifier.

Is your house an older house by any chance? My house is 10 years old and I had such a large amount of condensation on the back window (because new houses are built more energy efficient and air tight than older ones) that it actually rotted the floor under the back door - yes it was only particle board but it rotted in about 3 years, so I guess I justified the whole house rotting vs $2K pretty quickly.

Mark

[Delphinus]

I run a Lifebreath HRV. Best investment I ever made for my house. I had not even 150gallons at the time and six months into my new house the humidity at 40%-50% in the winter was causing weeping windows and mildew on drywall and ceilings. It was either "fix this now" or "sell the tanks and stay with a nano tank."

It fixed it.

Never looked back either. Best decision I ever made was to get a HRV.

I did go one model size larger than what the vendor recommended, whether this was necessary or not I don't know but I needed a silver bullet solution and the difference of a couple hundred dollars on the overall price tag wasn't enough not to do it at the time.

[Coleus]

Tony, what model do you have ? Trying to pick out the one that suit my house. Also, open couple windows yesterday and my tank ph jump from 8.1 to 8.2 at the highest peak. So hopefully HRV will help with that too beside the humidity problem