Build-It-Solar Blog: DIY Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV)

Saturday, December 8, 2012

DIY Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV)

An HRV pulls fresh air into the house and exhausts stale air to the outside. In the HRV, the fresh and stale air pass through a heat exchanger that recovers most of the heat remaining in the stale air to heat the incoming fresh outside air -- thus providing a significant saving in energy to heat the incoming air.

While I've been looking for material on building an HRV, I've not had much luck in finding anything that appeared to have a chance of working well over time. This book from William Shurcliff that has a little on a DIY design, but its pretty minimal.

Paul from BC noted the above page and came through with the article below describing an HRV design that uses sheets of Coroplast material for the heat exchanger. Paul actually built one of these for his own house some time back and it worked well for the time period he was in that house. It seems to me that the Coroplast has a descent chance of holding up well in the somewhat hostile (wet and even icy) environment inside an HRV heat exchanger. Thank you Paul for sending this in!