Advantages of Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery(MVHR) Units

Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery comes with a host of benefits and is one of the best decisions you can make for your home’s long term livability. When combined with a renewable energy heat source like a heat pump, it can save you a lot of money. Your energy savings and improved quality of life makes it well worth the investment.

How does it work?

Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery(MVHR) is a ventilation system where air is extracted from ‘wet’ rooms (e.g. bathrooms, kitchens) and passed through a heat exchanger. The MVHR unit transfers the heat from the extracted air into the incoming fresh air. This in turn results in fresh, filtered, pre-warmed air being supplied into ‘habitable’ rooms (e.g. lounge, bedrooms).

Mould and Indoor Pollutants

Our indoor environments can become very polluted if we don’t manage them carefully. The air can quickly become stale from our breathing, cooking, dust and dander, as well as from chemicals in household products and off-gassing from furniture and textiles. Every house needs to ‘breathe’ – to allow fresh air into our home, exchanging old air with new, during the day and night.

Full mechanical air exchange systems provide clean and warm fresh air throughout the whole house. A mechanical ventilation heat recovery (MVHR) system draws that moisture-heavy, used air out of every room. It simultaneously replaces it with equal quantities of fresh, clean air. Exhaust grilles take stale air out, while distribution grilles pour fresh air back in to the house, while heating it at the same time.

Advantages include:

Better Air Quality

• There is a constant fresh air supply with no need to open windows or doors.
• There is no build up of air pollutants that contribute to poor respiratory health. People can experience health effects from indoor air pollutants soon after exposure or, possibly, years later. It is very important to try to improve your home’s indoor air quality even if symptoms are not noticeable.

Humidity Control:

• Ventilating your home helps keep it mould-free, will eliminate draughts and ensure condensation-free windows. This is essential in the West of Ireland’s climate and can impact heavily on quality of life for everyone. It especially impacts vulnerable people like children, the elderly and people with respiratory conditions. Although those with pre-existing allergies or asthma are at greater risks, mould can also cause health effects in otherwise healthy people. Measures to prevent or reduce mould exposure are important to everyone.

Energy Saving:

• Conventional homes are very expensive to heat and it is incredibly inefficient to invest money in heating your home to then lose that heat by opening windows to bring in fresh air. With an MVHR unit, you bypass the need to get rid of stale air manually. With MVHR you can ensure that you are maximising your home’s energy efficiency potential.

If you’re interested in a system like this, or you would like further information on our products, please fill out our contact form or email us at info@nuthermgalway.ie.

Our team at Nutherm Galway have over 10 years’ experience installing ventilation systems. We only use the highest quality tried and tested products designed especially for the Irish climate. For more information on the Vent Axia units we install see here.

You can also check out our resource page where you can download the information sheets for all our products.