I am looking for a whole house ventilation system for an existing house in the UK.
Heat recovery ventilation sounds good but the conventional installation is impractical because of the need to install ducts to supply air to all habitable rooms.
Positive input ventilation seems easier as it uses just one supply vent, at the top of the house and then relies on air pressure to push the stale air out. However, my husband worries that we might be taking cold air from the loft and pushing it around the house, making the house even colder.
I came across the idea of an anti-stratification duct (see Brett Salter, Mountain bungalow) and wondered if it might be possible to combine this with heat recovery, i.e. have a central extraction and heat recovery unit in the loft drawing air from the wet rooms, then pumping the warm, fresh, filtered air down the house via just one duct coming out at the bottom of the house.
This warm air would then naturally rise up again, bringing fresh air to the whole house.
Does this sound like a viable solution?
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Not real clear on what you are saying. Destratifying duct/fan is definately doable. BUT only if you have thermal stratification. You need to measure it during 'normal' conditions. If it is 20 Fdeg difference, then you have stratification.
Not sure what you mean by 'wet' rooms. Don't know if you need heat exchange. If you have stratification, aren't you taking air from a warm location and moving it down to a cooler location? Maybe you're referring to reverse stratification? Could you describe what it is you have and what it is you want to happen (while ignoring how you might accomplish it for now)?
Tell us more about your house.
You mention problems with installing duct, does your house have historic qualities, or is it built in a way that you can't use duct?
Also why are you looking at ventilation - what problem are you trying to solve? I'm in Southern California, and fresh air in the house is important to me too as I don't have AC... but my climate is a bit different from yours!
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