Experience with Minotair?
I am planning to build a house in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia (zone 5). With mild but humid summers, dew point temps can be very close to outdoor temps. For example, 70 degree days at 90% RH are not uncommon. I need latent cooling. Does anyone have knowledge, experience or opinion of the Minotair Pentacair-V12? This unit seems like it could be right for me and it also takes care of ventilation needs and “probably” could meet all of my cooling needs as well as early fall/late spring heating. Any discussion would be appreciated; thank you! I plan on a good air barrier and better-than-code thermal barrier, but certainly not Passive House standards.
I posted a similar question under a “response” to a recent blog by Allison Bailes on dehumidifiers and am reposting here to try to get more visibility. I apologize for the double post. While I am a first-time poster I have very much benefited from the excellent information availabie on this site. Thank you all!
For the sake of brevity, I will post some additional comments in a subsequent post comparing the specs of this unit with those of a whole house dehumidifier.
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Hey Fred.
There are some thoughts on the Minotair in this article: Lessons From a Practical Passive House
No experience with the Minotair, but perhaps the UltraAire SD12 is relevant: https://www.ultra-aire.com/dehumidifiers/sd12/ Looks like a latent load tuned ducted mini-split, but it has sensible (ie non-latent) cooling capacity as well (4,300 BTUs), and outside ventilation.
Perhaps that's what you mean by the comparison with a whole-house dehu, that would be useful!
Cheers,
James
Thank you James. Alas, this is the last thing I want! Brrrrrrr...I can already feel myself shivering.
Hi Fred, did you end up deciding to go with the Minotair? We’re doing a new build in a similar humid climate (Appalachians in NC) and the Minotair seems really well suited to our needs.