From a ventilation perspective, thermal comfort, air quality, and light are always concerning when aspiring to design houses near to Passivhaus standards. Architects Crawford Partnerships’ holistic approach to these issues led them to choose Blauberg Vento Single Room Heat Recovery Units as ventilation for the whole project.
To ensure that all available space was assured to the client, in this modestly sized, 91m2, two-story house, Crawford Partnership moved away from the norm, which would be to install a bulky traditional central MVHR unit with ducts and grilles and opted to use the space-saving Blauberg Vento's, ductless, wall mounted MVHR units in each room.
The Vento units work silently to extract dirty, stale air from each room. In turn, they supply fresh, filtered air from outside and recycle up to 93% of the heat, normally wasted with traditional ventilation. Each unit is Wifi enabled and uses smart technology to communicate with each of the units to provide a whole-house ventilation solution.
Five Blauberg Vento Heat Recovery Units were used in total for this project. One Vento-Maxi Unit was used on the ground floor for comfort ventilation. Two Vento-Duo Units in each of the wet rooms on the first floor and two Vento-Midi Units were used in each of the bedrooms. All units run silently at very low speeds at night allowing uninterrupted sleep, even in the bedrooms.
This type of ventilation system suited the Kenilworth Road Project as it provides constant extraction of dirty air that is often laden with condensation, mold spores, smells, and Co2 that builds up within the warm envelope of the house. It also supplies constant air from outside that replenishes the house with fresh air and oxygen on both floors. The built-in heat recovery core within each unit then recycles the heat normally wasted if traditional extractor fan ventilation was used.
This replaces the standard 'Building Regulation' approach, which would be to install extractor fans in your kitchen, bathroom and wet rooms, pump out all the heat and energy you have created, and pull cold air in through drafty trickle vents and windows, then, having to put the heating on because it's cold. You are constantly losing heat and constantly having drafts!
It is also worth mentioning, that from a ventilation perspective, airtight houses also contribute to better indoor air quality. Vento Single Room Heat Recovery Units can filter the fresh air brought into your home. You are not relying on air being naturally dragged through 'nooks and crannies' of your walls, adding dust, mold, fibers from insulation, and other inorganic matter. Generally, not things you want to be breathing in!
In addition to providing adequate levels of ventilation for the whole house, the proven physics of using Vento Single Room Heat Recovery Units is that they recover significantly more energy than they use.
Each unit is fitted with low-energy DC motors (down to 1.8w per unit), coupled with high rates of heat and energy recovery, significantly lower levels of primary heating are required. This reduces overall reliance on the air source heat pump, to reach the desired thermal comfort levels for the home.
Smart Controls with Wifi
Vento Maxi-Air Units working with other Vento Mini, Maxi & Duo-Air to provide a whole house, de-centralised heat recovery ventilation solution.
Full control of individual units, or as a connected MVHR system, is operated via your smart phone or tablet. The Blauberg app can be easily downloaded giving full control of speed, humidity, manual override, sensor and timer options. Each unit also has localised simple controls for manually overriding automatic features and shutting the heat recovery units off when not required.
Blauberg Vento Maxi-Air
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