After spending days or weeks on end cooped up indoors with the AC running, you may notice that the air in the house gets a little stale. You aren’t imagining this sensation: overly filtered air can be uncomfortable, even if it is cool. Logic says that you can solve this issue by opening a window and letting some fresh air in—but if the air outside is swelteringly hot and humid, doing so can ruin your comfort.
So how can you address this problem? The best solution is to look into options for a system that can improve your indoor air quality in Charlottesville, VA without ruining your temperature control. We have just the thing for you: an energy recovery ventilator.
What Is an Energy Recovery Ventilator?
It seems like a long and almost intimidating name for a home comfort system, but the concept behind it is fairly simple—it is impressive nonetheless! Energy recovery ventilators (ERVs) are systems installed within your ductwork where they can pull fresh air into your home. Fresh air issue solved!
But wait, that doesn’t sound all that helpful or worthwhile if all it does is bring fresh air in from the outdoors. We’d agree with you if that were the limit of this system’s job. But an ERV does more than that. ERVs bring in fresh air that they pre-cool using the energy in the air in your home. This means you get fresh air that doesn’t mess with your temperature control or make things harder on your AC.
Pretty impressive, right?
How an ERV Helps Your Comfort
So, now that you understand the basic idea behind what an ERV does, let’s dive into specifics of how exactly it helps benefit your home comfort.
- It saves energy while improving comfort. Opening a window to get fresh air can ruin your comfort and also mess with your home’s energy efficiency. In contrast, an ERV is going to help save energy while improving your comfort. ERVs can recover around 70 to 80% of the energy in the air in your home and deliver that energy to the air it brings in, rather than using extra energy to get the job done.
- It boosts indoor air quality. As we mentioned before, the key benefit of an ERV is that it helps give your indoor air quality a boost. This is because it tackles stale air directly and can even help balance things out if the air is too dry. (ERV systems can also transfer moisture!)
- They help your HVAC system. By adjusting moisture levels and bringing in fresh air without using extra energy, an ERV can actually help your HVAC system work more effectively if only by improving your comfort level. This works all year long too since ERVs can also pre-heat incoming air during the winter.
Need to get the air in your home back on track? Come to us to get the systems and services that will improve your indoor air quality.
Contact Mack Morris Heating & Air Conditioning to get started today. We can’t control the weather outside of your home, but we can control the weather inside your home.