How to get fresh air into a house in winter

leftofcentre100

Hi folks, I have your standard 3 bed semi detached house. It was built in the 80's and is double glazed and insulated.

We don't have a damp problem, but I am concerned about getting fresh air into the house. As you know our climate is quite damp anyway, and we do that thing were we are loath to open the windows to much in the winter as it will let the heat out. At the moment what I do is open a few windows for half an hour or so during the day to air the house.

I know people will say a house is never air tight anyway, their is gaps and when you open the front door etc air gets in, but I do think getting more air into the house will be beneficial from a heath point of view.

I looked at things like positive input ventilation, but I liked the idea of having some kind of heat exchanger feature, so it would capture the heat already in the house.

I came across the Vent-Axia Lo-Carbon Tempra through the wall heat recovery unit.

As a new user to the forum it is not letting me ad the link, but if you google it you will see the product page.

It is billed as a single room heat exchanger ventilation, but I was thinking of maybe putting it in the hall and running it continuously. It uses 2watts of electric per hour on trickle mode, and creates 20dba of noise (which i think is quite quiet). I phoned the helpline and I said on trickle mode it will bring 4.2 litres of air into the house per second, I have no idea how good this is. There is a boost mode to increase this to 10 litres a second.

I know if it is billed as a single room solution I can not expect it to ventilate the whole house, but as I said I am just looking something to give us a fresh air top up.

What do you think of this solution, or do you have any better suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

Brian

phill99

I can't help you are over engineering a problem and adding hige cost into it.

Make sure your DG trickle vents are open. And if that isn't enough open the windows more. I would be very surprised if you have your heating on all day, so when it's off and at its coldest and at the point wher heat loss will be kept to a minimum, open a few more windows. It's hardly complicated and certainly doesn't require a mechanical solution.

leftofcentre100

Hi Phil, part of the problem is we do not have trickle vents on our double glazed windows :-(

I take your point about the windows, that is what we currently do, but what about the other 23 hours in the day, plus you have the hassle of going round and opening and closing windows.

The idea of a constant intake of fresh air appeals to me.

Brian

shegar

leftofcentre100 wrote: »

Hi Phil, part of the problem is we do not have trickle vents on our double glazed windows :-(

I take your point about the windows, that is what we currently do, but what about the other 23 hours in the day, plus you have the hassle of going round and opening and closing windows.

The idea of a constant intake of fresh air appeals to me.

Brian

A hassle opening and closing windows,?, I have much worse jobs to do everyday in the home .......

in_the_Cotswolds

leftofcentre100 wrote: »

The idea of a constant intake of fresh air appeals to me.

Brian

Leave the windows open then. Turn the heating off before you open all the windows, saves you some money (be a good MSE) and put extra jumpers on.