ERV noise in a conditioned crawl
I’ve got a fully conditioned crawl, so no subfloor insulation. The floors are not installed yet and will be nail+glue 5/8″ engineered wood white oak. We’re running an industrial dehumidifier in the crawl now for construction moisture, and I noticed it’s quite loud in the rooms above. That got me thinking about other noise from the crawl, since there is no sub-floor insulation.
All we will have that will make noise is a Zehnder Q600, and that will be located under the master closet (with the master bath on the one side and laundry room on the other.) So there’s no bedroom or living area right above it. But does anyone have experience with an ERV in a non-sound insulated crawlspace and wood floors above? Does the noise stay fairly quiet and isolated, or travel through the whole crawl to the rooms above?
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Replies
My ERV (budget unit with ECM blowers) is in a cabinet in the kitchen and makes zero noise. Initially one of the blowers was out of balance which would cause the counter to shake, that was fixed with a replacement unit.
My recommendation would be in a crawlsapce to mount the unit on the ground, no chance of coupling any vibration into the structure. If you must hang it on the floor joists, use spring hangers.
The bigger noise from an ERV is the air flow noise through the ducting if you run all hard pipe. A section of flex or an in-line duct silencer is a must for these.