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Natural ventilation used in appartment building

Ventilation is important in passive solar design to maintain good quality indoor air (air that is not too humid, too dry or smelly). Often, this is achieved using the "open window" method, but at present far better alternatives are present in the form of natural ventilation and heat recovery ventilation.

Air source heat pumps or heat recovery ventilators can allow for greater ventilation while minimizing heat loss.

Natural ventilation

Natural ventilation is useful for new buildings (e.g. earthships) and (old) appartment buildings. This as the buildings need to lend themselves to this and thus often need to be made specifically for this ventilation method.

Heat recovery ventilation

Schematic of a heat recovery ventilation system in a house
Schematic of the counter current air-to-air heat exchanger

Heat recovery ventilation is useful for improving most other old buildings. Before implementing a heat recovery ventilation system, it is best to first perform an energy audit and plug any holes that were found troughout your home in the process. See Ultra-low energy house#Plugging holes

See also

External links

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Authors KVDP
License CC-BY-SA-3.0
Language English (en)
Related 0 subpages, 14 pages link here
Impact 439 page views
Created December 29, 2009 by Emesee
Modified May 4, 2022 by Pedro Kracht
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