Air Exchanger without a furnace
In my new house I am installing Radiant Floor Heating, no forced air furnace. I will be putting in an air exchanger (with a heat exhanger built into it) but these seem to be designed to hook up to the air return on a furnace so that the air from outside is properly heated before being distributed through the house. With the weather we have here (down to -30c) at times in the winter I think I going to have a problem with the incoming air not being heated enough. I was thinking that some sort of radiator hooked up to the boiler could be used to further heat the incoming air. Does anyone know of a company that makes a product like this, or could I just create one with a number of loops of copper pipe, or perhaps even a radiator like the type used for transmission/oil coolers?
Robert
Replies
The air exchangers I have seen were independent of the furnace. They were basically a box set up with a counter-current exchange system to gradually transfer the energy from the heated air on its way out of the house to the cooler air that was being drawn into the house. I believe that either "This Old House" or "Old House Journal" had a story on them in the last two years.
If you're handy I see no reason why you couldn't rig up some sort of mini radiator to heat the incoming air.
I am guessing that you are using the air exchanger becuase your house will be really tight and you want to bring in fresh air.
Let us know how is turns out.
I hope you get some more answers to this. We're doing the same thing (RFH), but I thought the HRV would just go in as a stand-alone, with no feed from the boiler. I didn't think that heat was needed in the HRV. I don't think it runs full time, just a few minutes every hour, or however you set it up. My other question is if you still need bathroom and kitchen fans. Getting different answers on that.
So what are you doing for air conditioning ? Humidity control ?
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario