Hello everyone,
We are planning our house build (timber prefabricated house) and are currently considering whether to include a central ventilation system or not. We would appreciate hearing about your experiences with this.
Did you build with or without one, and how satisfied are you with it in everyday life? Is the air inside the house comfortable, or perhaps too dry due to low humidity?
We expect or hope that such a system will provide constantly fresh, unused air inside the house and help prevent mold growth in a tightly built new home. In practice, we won’t be ventilating the house by opening windows 2–3 times a day. To be honest, we already find ventilating by opening windows on cross-ventilation once a day to be a hassle. More realistically, we would occasionally open windows when we feel like it. (We currently live in an older building, where air exchange is not an issue.)
On the other hand, there is the question of how often you actually need to ventilate in a diffusion-open timber construction. Excess moisture should be sufficiently removed anyway. Also, on 160 m² (1,722 sq ft) of living space, any produced moisture and CO2 should distribute well enough.
Such a system is not exactly inexpensive, and we do not know anyone in our family or circle of friends who has had mold in their home, even though they only occasionally open windows and do not ventilate continuously.
It is hard to judge whether this is a great feature to be very glad about later or an expensive investment with little added value. Therefore, we would really appreciate your experiences and advice on this 🙂
Best regards,
Sebastian
We are planning our house build (timber prefabricated house) and are currently considering whether to include a central ventilation system or not. We would appreciate hearing about your experiences with this.
Did you build with or without one, and how satisfied are you with it in everyday life? Is the air inside the house comfortable, or perhaps too dry due to low humidity?
We expect or hope that such a system will provide constantly fresh, unused air inside the house and help prevent mold growth in a tightly built new home. In practice, we won’t be ventilating the house by opening windows 2–3 times a day. To be honest, we already find ventilating by opening windows on cross-ventilation once a day to be a hassle. More realistically, we would occasionally open windows when we feel like it. (We currently live in an older building, where air exchange is not an issue.)
On the other hand, there is the question of how often you actually need to ventilate in a diffusion-open timber construction. Excess moisture should be sufficiently removed anyway. Also, on 160 m² (1,722 sq ft) of living space, any produced moisture and CO2 should distribute well enough.
Such a system is not exactly inexpensive, and we do not know anyone in our family or circle of friends who has had mold in their home, even though they only occasionally open windows and do not ventilate continuously.
It is hard to judge whether this is a great feature to be very glad about later or an expensive investment with little added value. Therefore, we would really appreciate your experiences and advice on this 🙂
Best regards,
Sebastian
SebbSebb schrieb:
And when the operating costs balance out with the heating savings, how are the maintenance costs? Do you often need to buy new filters, or is it enough to clean the existing filters regularly?
Maintenance costs are not really representative for us, since we have the entire system serviced (air-to-water heat pump + ventilation). This costs about 450€ (approximately $480) every 2 years and also includes replacing the ventilation filters in our combined unit. Although you can easily replace those yourself, and changing them more often than every 2 years is definitely beneficial, especially for allergy sufferers.
We clean and/or replace the cone filters behind the exhaust air every 3 months or so.
You can rinse them several times under hot water with a strong stream. However, after a while it becomes obvious that they have been washed several times. When they no longer look good, I replace them with new ones.
A pack of 20 replacement filters costs around 20€ (about $21) and should last us 2–3 years.
F
FoxMulder247 Mar 2022 09:54Out of curiosity:
How is the indoor humidity during winter with your mechanical ventilation with heat recovery systems? What average values do you have?
My brother-in-law (timber frame house with EPS insulation, vapor barrier, mechanical ventilation without enthalpy exchanger) mentioned the other day that his indoor humidity is currently around 20-25%, and—no joke—he is getting cracked to slightly bleeding hands. He is also working from home all the time at the moment. 😳
Is that possible?
How is the indoor humidity during winter with your mechanical ventilation with heat recovery systems? What average values do you have?
My brother-in-law (timber frame house with EPS insulation, vapor barrier, mechanical ventilation without enthalpy exchanger) mentioned the other day that his indoor humidity is currently around 20-25%, and—no joke—he is getting cracked to slightly bleeding hands. He is also working from home all the time at the moment. 😳
Is that possible?
We are also fully working from home, so we are always at home during the week.
I don’t have any problems with humidity at all. I don’t measure it, but I don’t feel like it’s too humid or too dry here. We have a promotional weather station sitting around that shows 33% humidity. But whether that device is reliable (or if 33% is okay) I really can’t say.
I don’t have any problems with humidity at all. I don’t measure it, but I don’t feel like it’s too humid or too dry here. We have a promotional weather station sitting around that shows 33% humidity. But whether that device is reliable (or if 33% is okay) I really can’t say.
B
Benutzer2007 Mar 2022 10:09FoxMulder24 schrieb:
My brother-in-law (timber frame house with EPS insulation, vapor barrier, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery but without enthalpy exchanger) mentioned recently that he currently has 20-25% relative humidity and Currently 35% (although with decentralized mechanical ventilation with heat recovery), slightly lower during the day with strong sunlight exposure.
33% humidity, if accurate, is not ideal and considered too dry. You won’t immediately get bloody noses, but the respiratory system is certainly somewhat stressed.
40-50% is optimal, although 60% already approaches the limit of being too humid. This is more of a building-related issue and indirectly affects the body negatively. The body might initially feel comfortable at 70-80%, until mold spores appear.
40-50% is optimal, although 60% already approaches the limit of being too humid. This is more of a building-related issue and indirectly affects the body negatively. The body might initially feel comfortable at 70-80%, until mold spores appear.
We have also set values on the system between 50-60%. So, 60 as the maximum and 50 as the minimum. But I think we turned off the program that manages this. The current value therefore seems to be the default.
I’m not going to adjust it now since we are comfortable, and I rather assume that the measurement from our "promotional gift" is not accurate. 😉
I’m not going to adjust it now since we are comfortable, and I rather assume that the measurement from our "promotional gift" is not accurate. 😉
Similar topics