ERV Maintenance: Pressure Check, Clean Filters, Evacuate the Bugs for Home Ventilation
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- Опубліковано 11 сер 2022
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Depending on where you live, where your fresh air intake is located, and how you run your ventilation system, your filters may get pretty gross in a matter of months. Here’s a few pointers on picking, and maintaining an ERV or HRV.
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Wow the Google machine is working overtime and Creating the content I have questions about on demand!! Getting back into things Corbett!! Here's to lots of kids :D !!
Haha good to hear from you Ennio! Come to a Mastermind one of these days!
Where to buy the new filter?
What is this app you are using to check airflow?
Did you install a physical radon barrier when the house was built or do you have both methods. If so. Is the former not adequate enough in your opinion. Would you recommend both?
Yes, yes, and yes
this is why you should have a separate filter setup on the supply with a much bigger filter. that filter is tiny, no wonder it clogged up so fast. even my slightly smaller than typical filter, lasts 12 months in my small house. use the stock erv filters to protect the erv.
Good idea, T
@@HomePerformance any reason for the lack of separate filter? Matt Risinger had a video of his with the zender, also seen it locally here as well. so its seams to be commonly done. odds are in years to come those filters will probably not be available. i would want to stick to a simple, common as mud filter, you will still get in 20 years time. or at least the whole filter housing is easy to change over should filters no longer be available.
I don’t think anybody here would call Zehnders ‘common’. And it’s more en vogue to offer a one-and-done product, the system of interconnected parts is not a mainstream interest. Hence this channel and our TV show.
Any new ideas on inserting something on the interior or exterior to help filter the bugs and other big stuff before it gets to the ERV? Maybe a larger exterior fresh air intake vent with a filter to catch the big stuff (bugs, blades of grass, large pollen, etc.)?
ua-cam.com/video/XmjHn8pkECM/v-deo.html
@@tetsuikyo A cyclone fan design is a clever solution to removing the large particulates from the outdoor air and discharging the particulates outside thereby reducing the rate of clogging the inlet filter of the ERV.
We have fine layers of dust (our Dyson V15 green laser is so generous to point out) every day or so on every floor…trying to think about how to clean/upgrade/enhance/replace an old HVAC system (not original to the 1960 home, but definitely old)
Any thoughts/ suggestions? We live in Dallas if that helps hone any feedback
Separately, absolutely love your chancel, learned/learning so much as a man who never learned these things growing up. Also, I bought a low-level carbon monoxide detector based upon your Rec(first video I saw on the channel) thank you, thank you, thank you!!
Wonderful! That dust is coming from somewhere- we humans happen to make a lot of it, yes, but building materials shouldn’t be degrading that fast for sure. So you could install a MERV 11/13/16 filter cabinet on your HVAC and run the fan continuously, BUT it might be that the dust is coming from outside. Sometimes homes are accidentally depressurized because of HVAC leakage or exhaust devices. You should have your home tested if possible. In Dallas, I recommend a home inspector named Jim Hemsell, who’s one of my Mastermind students.
@@HomePerformance bless you fine sir.
Can you recommend anyone in Brooklyn, NY for pressure testing?
Yes I can- contact Allie at Biophilic Build
Have been wondering if HVAC ducts really need to be insulated in high performance homes. Your video seems to confirm they are not required if the system is working correctly, and presumably if you are actively managing dehumidity. I guess ERV and Make Up Air intakes would still need insulation.
It’s an insurance policy, best way to look at it I think
hear me out here but these things seem to be around 100cfm on average and costs $1k+. why not just run a duct from the outside of the home to the plenum of the air handler before the fan? when the AHU turns on it sucks in air from outside so it automatically uses your air handlers filter, or install an inline damper/filter shroud with some ingenuity and it costs almost nothing. then install one variable speed exhaust somewhere like the living room/kitchen (or on the return line of existing ductwork) to achieve the pressure you want, if you have an older leakier home may not even be needed to install additional exhaust.
Is an ERV prone to mold growing in the core? Read online people had this issue
Well, it is important to vacuum and wash the core, so if you maintain it well, then no.
So you don't need a bug screen in the intake air, the incoming filter catches the bugs?
Haha, good catch Cindi. The screen that’s in there already is apparently not good enough for THIS APPLICATION- it’s fine when not installed 3’ above the ground in a buggy environment. Just one more example of how off-the-shelf products don’t work for everybody. I’ll be tweaking ours with a finer mesh, BUT THEN I’ll have to add cleaning the outdoor vent screens to my maintenance schedule, because the caking of bugs will be outside instead.
@@HomePerformance Thanks for clarifying! I'm having trouble finding nice exterior intake vents that have cleanable bug screens. Many either they have no bug screen, or they have them but they don't come out for cleaning.
Yes :(
Are there washable/reusable filters made for ERVs?
You can wash these and reuse them, but not indefinitely.
It seems ERVs use undersized filters for what they're designed to do. Even the Zender units seem to use undersized filters.
I'm surprised they don't have anything above a MERV 13. Keep looking for a solution to go to 15 during fire season.
@@cindianderson9443 my guess is that they would become inefficient in energy consumption if they went into hepa or ulpa territory, needing more powerful fans.
@@alexanderjamieson7971 Sure, but sometimes, like during the 2 weeks of bad forest fires we get every year, you don't care much about efficiency.
Ervs =too much Maintainence, hence in practice