Air Leakage
(Uncontrolled Ventilation)
Fresh, clean indoor air is crucial to your health and comfort. Our houses contain many sources for indoor air pollution such as off gassing of furniture, cabinets, or floor coverings. Cleaning products, our clothing, pets, and soils beneath our houses can all deliver pollutants into our home’s air which can lead to illness and allergies.
Our homes are typically equipped with exhaust fans in the bathrooms and kitchens which can remove many of these pollutants. However, when you remove air from the home an equal amount of air will be drawn back into the home. Where does that air come from? Unfortunately the answer is often that it is sucked into the home in an uncontrolled way. Cracks or holes in floors, walls, and ceilings are typical sources for your “clean air.” What is flowing through those cracks and holes? Dirty, musty, or unconditioned air coming from crawlspaces or attics can be the source of your fresh air!
Due to construction defects in the building shell you may have an uncontrolled “ventilation system” which degrades your indoor air quality. Not only does this air infiltration degrade the air you breath it can also ruin the performance of insulation. When the air flows through insulation your R30 may only be insulating as if it were R3. Air leakage is wasting tremendous amounts of energy and needlessly costing homeowners hundreds of dollars a year.
Uncontrolled air leakage through your home can also be very effective at moving moisture into spaces that can lead to structural damage and illness.
A home performance contractor can find and fix the air leakage in the home’s shell as well as install balanced ventilation systems to insure you breathe fresh clean air inside your home.
Balanced Mechanical Ventilation
(Controlled Ventilation)
A balanced ventilation system installed in a well sealed house will provide you with a clean source of fresh air. A combination of exhaust fans and fresh air supply installed in the proper locations is the solution that a home performance contractor will recommend. A balanced system effectively removes moisture and contaminates at their source location and pulls fresh clean air from outside of the home.
A balanced system can be as simple as kitchen and bath fans removing stale air in combination with a fresh air supply connected to the furnace or air conditioning duct. The balanced ventilation system for the best energy conservation is a Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV.) The Heat Recovery Ventilator delivers fresh clean air to the home but recovers much of the heat (or cooling in Summer) from the stale air before it leaves the building. The two air supplies pass by each other in a series of fin shaped tubes and exchange heat.
