ᐅ Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery – Odors spreading throughout the house?
Created on: 9 Sep 2016 10:19
K
Kaspatoo
Hello,
I visited my brother-in-law yesterday; he built his house in 2007 and has a mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery and an air-to-water heat pump. Everything is integrated in a combined unit, the LWZ 303 from Stiebel Eltron.
No matter where you are in the house, you can find dust (for example, on top of the wardrobe). If you take some dust with your finger and smell it (not sniff, just a light smell), it always smells like detergent. The room itself does not have that smell.
Except for the utility room, where the washing machine and the ventilation unit are both located. According to him, sometimes it even smells like his wife’s hairspray there, but I couldn’t verify that myself.
From what I have researched, the heat exchanger in the ventilation unit is a cross-counterflow heat exchanger. As I understand it, this means the supply and exhaust air streams are completely separated, so no odors can pass between them.
However, my brother-in-law is convinced that the air streams come into direct contact. After some research, I found something called regenerative systems, which are more common in decentralized ventilation systems. These alternate between blowing supply air and extracting exhaust air through the same device in a synchronized way.
One of my guesses was whether the air intake might be leaking and drawing air from the utility room itself.
Another possibility I considered is whether odors from washing escape through the ventilation duct to the outside and are then directly drawn back in. That would mean the ventilation duct might be leaking.
What do you think this could be?
I visited my brother-in-law yesterday; he built his house in 2007 and has a mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery and an air-to-water heat pump. Everything is integrated in a combined unit, the LWZ 303 from Stiebel Eltron.
No matter where you are in the house, you can find dust (for example, on top of the wardrobe). If you take some dust with your finger and smell it (not sniff, just a light smell), it always smells like detergent. The room itself does not have that smell.
Except for the utility room, where the washing machine and the ventilation unit are both located. According to him, sometimes it even smells like his wife’s hairspray there, but I couldn’t verify that myself.
From what I have researched, the heat exchanger in the ventilation unit is a cross-counterflow heat exchanger. As I understand it, this means the supply and exhaust air streams are completely separated, so no odors can pass between them.
However, my brother-in-law is convinced that the air streams come into direct contact. After some research, I found something called regenerative systems, which are more common in decentralized ventilation systems. These alternate between blowing supply air and extracting exhaust air through the same device in a synchronized way.
One of my guesses was whether the air intake might be leaking and drawing air from the utility room itself.
Another possibility I considered is whether odors from washing escape through the ventilation duct to the outside and are then directly drawn back in. That would mean the ventilation duct might be leaking.
What do you think this could be?
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