Home Ventilation is the V in HVAC, but it gets much less attention than heating or air conditioning. It’s still a crucial part of an energy-efficient home that helps to control moisture and remove contaminants such as allergens, viruses and micro-particles.
You have a few home ventilation options to choose from when you’re building or renovating a home.
Home Ventilation Systems Improve Indoor Air Quality
With indoor air quality a hot topic in the Bay Area with rising temperatures, many homeowners have taken steps to improve how they ventilate their homes. Let’s go over some of these options to help you decide which is best for your home.
Natural Home Ventilation
Natural ventilation refers to the uncontrolled movement of air through windows and doors. It also includes the cracks and small holes that make older homes “drafty.” For many older Bay Area homes, this was an efficient way to control the air quality and temperature. These days, homeowners seal up these cracks and holes to make homes more energy-efficient. Your home might still have some natural ventilation, but your central heating and air system uses its air ducts to improve your house’s air quality.
Spot Ventilation
Spot ventilation utilizes localized exhaust fans to remove indoor pollutants and moisture from specific rooms. You would turn on a fan to reduce humidity in your bathroom or remove smoke from a kitchen. Well-placed spot ventilation can increase the effectiveness of both natural ventilation and whole house ventilation.
Whole House Ventilation
Whole house ventilation provides uniform ventilation throughout your house. It comes standard, of course, with any central HVAC system. Whole house fans also ventilate the whole home. There are typically four types of whole house ventilation systems. Exhaust ventilation systems depressurize your home, supply ventilation systems increase the pressure in your home, balanced ventilation systems do the job of exhaust and supply systems to maintain consistent air quality, and energy recovery ventilation systems transfer heat from warm air inside the house to the outside in the winter and vice versa in the summer. As their name implies, energy recovery ventilation systems are intended to reduce the cost of heating or cooling your home.
Upgrading Your Home Ventilation System
If you think your Bay Area home is in need of an upgraded ventilation system, contact Element Home Solutions. With two offices in the Bay Area, we serve homes from Santa Rosa to San Jose. We will be happy to take a look at your home to determine what type of ventilation system will work best for you. Contact us today for more information or to receive an estimate.
