ᐅ Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery and swirl diffuser – Passive House

Hello everyone,

I’m writing here as a tenant, not as the property owner.

My wife and I will be moving into a passive house with a controlled ventilation system in September.

One of the supply air vents is located at foot level on a wall where I would like to place a cabinet.

My question: Is it possible to install a built-in cabinet in front of such an air outlet?
I would leave the part of the cabinet directly affected by the vent open at the back and top.

Would that be sufficient? The cabinet does not reach the ceiling. There is about 10 cm (4 inches) of space above it.

Thank you very much for your answers.

A brief note about the apartment: 160 m² (1,722 sq ft)
The living area where the cabinet is to be placed is 70 m² (753 sq ft).

Best regards,
Marko

Apart from the fact that such air vents are not very practical (where exactly does the cold air go again), I would advise against placing a cupboard in front of them – with a room of this size, proper air distribution is important.

Normally, there should be at least one more air vent (70m² (750ft²)) – or rather even two more.

Hi,

could you please rephrase this sentence in a simpler way?
“Apart from the fact that such air outlets are not really practical (where exactly does the cold air go again)”

By “such air outlets,” do you mean the ones installed at floor level? And when you say air outlet, do you mean the point where air is either blown into or extracted from the room? From the room’s perspective, it’s an outlet when air is flowing out, but from the viewpoint of the controlled residential ventilation system, it’s an outlet when air is flowing into the room.

Warm air rises.

Generally, it’s preferable to extract cold rather than warm air.
So, air outlets are usually placed in the floor or close to floor level.

Warm air near the ceiling doesn’t help me much because I’m not that tall.
Ideally, the warm air could mix with the incoming colder air to warm it up a bit.
So, air inlets would be placed near the ceiling or at ceiling height.

But does warm air also contain more CO2? If so, the setup described above might be wrong, because it would extract the presumably fresher air directly at floor level. On the other hand, I think the mixing with fresh air from above balances the ratio of oxygen and warm air.

You always manage to make things very complicated – you did understand what I said in simple sentences.

I am not in favor of floor-level vents (or low-level vents) because both the extraction and supply should ideally come from above to properly ventilate the room.

This is about having a detailed scope of work.

For the general contractor, it might be enough to just write “I’ll build you a house.” But everyone advises writing down every detail.

I am a fan of clear statements where a layperson cannot misinterpret anything.

A colleague at work built a new house a few years ago and got a PLUGGIT controlled residential ventilation system installed.
As far as I understood, initially a different system from another manufacturer was offered, with units mounted on the ceiling. The Pluggit system was then offered with air inlets integrated INTO the floor.
Apart from the fact that it occasionally sucks out air, he is very satisfied with it. But that wouldn’t be my choice.

We have floor outlets on the upper floor, and so far I don’t see any disadvantages. The main advantage, in my view, is that the duct system is very simple: two stories, installation on the structural slab, core drilling downward, with supply and exhaust air at the ceiling below, and supply air in the floor above, exhaust air on the wall quite high up.