ERVs and dusty homes
ranson
| Posted in Mechanicals on
Do ERVs work well in dusty homes?
I’m building in the country in a windy field. I have have 200lbs of pets, and they kick up a lot of fur and dust. The return on the forced air system at my old place clogged up quite quickly, and that was with a big, deep filter.
I’m concerned that the little filters (or the cores) in an ERV or HRV will clog up and make the airflow imbalanced. If I would end up with a chronically imbalanced system, would I be better going exhaust only?
–John
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Replies
My new house is in a field. Only one dog, but a furry one. I clean or replace the HRV filters (MERV13) every few months and they aren't particularly dusty when I look at them. Don't forget there's much more air flowing through your heating system than through an HRV or ERV. I think you'll be fine.
One thing I wish I'd paid more attention to is limiting construction dust. Don't put a saw in the house to cut trim once drywall is in☺
Panasonic's new one will stay balanced up to .5" of pressure loss, the filter is TINY tough, you'll probably have to clean it monthly, there is one other ERV by Reversomatic that is self balancing but has poor core performance.
Consumer ERV really sucks, the commercial ones got giant filters and constant airflow algorithms, Panasonic really need to bring their bigger Chinese models over to the US, those got giant filters.
I guess what you can do is for the Panasonic one, hook up a big 20x25x4 media air cleaner to the ducts, then you'll only have to change it like once yearly. You'll want one on the intake too but then you'll have to insulate the box somehow otherwise it'll condensate water.