Should I exhaust from the bedrooms or the baths?
For a 2000 sq foot, 2 story house, with superinsulated 12 inch double stud walls in South Jersey, how should I best provide ventilation?
The design offers multiple choices. I can easily add a HRV with ducts drawing from the bedrooms or the baths or the kitchen or any combination of those. I have seen discussion on the GBA about the “smells like teen spirit” effect and I appreciate that lyric as I have two teen boys in those upstairs bedrooms.
I can easily supply air to an upstairs hall between the bath and bedrooms where I will be installing a mini-split. I can also supply air to the living room near another mini-split.
I am thinking I might add small bath exhaust fans with timers (perhaps with heating elements as well). Should I use the HRV instead of bath fans? I will also be adding a whole house fan that will primarily draw air from the kitchen area and the master bedroom on the first floor.
I know that I have many possibilities and I want to get this right, so I’m asking for any and all advice. I would add a PDF of the house floor plan but I do not see how . . .
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It seems I can add the attachment as an answer.
Michael,
Q. "Should I exhaust from the bedrooms or the baths?"
A. Why not from both?
If you are heating and cooling with ductless minisplit units, and if you don't plan to have indoor minisplit units in the bedrooms, I advise dumping the fresh outdoor air near the minisplits, and exhausting stale air from the bedrooms.
I assume that you have read this article: A New Way to Duct HRVs.
Thanks Martin. Do I need the bath fans? Should they be tied to the HRV?
Michael,
I think that the reason that your attachment doesn't work is that you have an illegal character in the file name -- an "&". If you remove the ampersand from the title (in other words, rename the file), you should be able to attach it to a comment.
Michael,
Just because you pull exhaust air from the bedrooms, doesn't mean you can't also pull exhaust air from the bathrooms. I would certainly connect the bathrooms to the exhaust duct of the HRV.
There is a long ongoing argument about whether homes that use an HRV to exhaust air from the bathrooms also need separate bath exhaust fans. I say no; others say yes. If you search the GBA site, you'll find a lot of discussion of the issue.
Thanks again Martin. I'll try to dig up the earlier discussions. Teen boys take long showers that steam up the bath several times a day, yet somehow they also need the air in their bedrooms well ventilated. What's with that? (Not really a green building question, but still ...)
I should have pointed out that I plan to have paddle fans in the bedrooms. I'm tempted to go with paddle fans and bath fans and eliminate the HRV altogether.
"I'm tempted to go with paddle fans and bath fans and eliminate the HRV altogether." And how are you going to supply make-up air if you only have exhaust fans?