Ventilation & heat recovery B


reathing is essential to life, and just as relevant to buildings as to people. But just by breathing, we each generate 400g of


water vapour per day. Multiply that by the number of people in your building and you have a lot of moisture building up, that, unless removed, will affect their health and cause damp, mould, rot in the building fabric.


The adage “build tight, ventilate right” is more pertinent than ever following the Covid pandemic. Air circulation inside is critical, to remove that moisture but also airborne pollutants, to maintain a fresh atmosphere inside so we humans perform at our optimal level.


The advantages of V-HR


The logical progression is to utilise systems that offer a combination of minimal loss of heat alongside adequate airflow: ventilation with heat recovery. One unit executes both supply and exhaust of air, in which a heat exchanger removes as much warmth as possible from the exhaust air transferring it into the cooler, fresh, incoming air. The process removes excess moisture from


inside, filters the incoming air to remove pollutants, and the transfer of warmth helps temper the incoming cooler air to modulate the temperature indoors without loading a central heating system.


Latest innovations


The concept is not new, as we all know. What is new is system evolution, particularly in performance and the ability to integrate with other low/ no energy building services to help deliver on the Government’s decarbonisation targets to reduce emissions. Manufacturers have refined the original concept of mechanical ventilation with heat recovery in response to the need to reduce our carbon footprint- a process accelerated by the spiralling energy bills every one of us- at home and at work- is facing. For us in the ventilation sector, the challenge was


obvious: how to utilise natural ventilation as much as possible. It is, after all, free, relying on natural air movement and buoyancy. Thus, the advent of hybrid ventilation with heat recovery (HV-HR) i.e. systems that predominantly use natural ventilation, using a low energy heat exchanger to extract as much of the warmth from the used exhaust air and transfer it into the incoming cooler air. A further low energy fan boosts airflow only as/when needed. Clever use of heat exchanger technology means that the latest options- our MFS-HR for example- can deliver up to 75% heat recovery! Airflow of up to 470l/s- in line with current Building


Regulations Approved Document F- makes sure adequate air changes are achieved. Recovering any quantity of heat from exhaust air and using it to temper the incoming air also helps reduce overall energy consumption, in that less supplementary heating is required to retain a comfortable ambient temperature inside. Now too, there are HV-HR options that include a further heat coil within the ventilation unit to boost heat output up to 4Kw (2Kw cooling) - for around £10/


24 March 2023


www.heatingandventilating.net


The advantages and latest innovations in ventilation with heat recovery


The current cost of energy has brought into sharp focus the need to find new ways to balance warming and airing our buildings. It gives us as an industry a huge challenge: to educate clients that stopping airflow to keep heat in is counter-productive, that they must ventilate to ensure the health of their staff, their building- and the planet. Ian Rogers, sales director Gilberts Blackpool explains


zone/unit/annum(at current energy prices). The heat performance can remove the need for separate central heating and all its associated plant, ducting, radiators, pipework- all impacting costs, space requirements, carbon emissions and embodied carbon. It is also possible to couple these options alongside


green heating technologies such as a boiler fitted with a flue economiser or heat source pump. Energy consumption and the carbon footprint are further improved. Any electricity required to run the ventilation can be created via wind turbines or solar arrays. Utilising combinations of these technologies, the ventilation could even achieve carbon negative status! There is an added associated benefit: these can also


reduce the amount of electricity required overall for the site, thereby cutting the need for space on which to install PV panels. With commercial energy bills reportedly quadrupling


in the past year, non-domestic buildings accounting for 25% of UK emissions from buildings, and the Government’s objective of reducing emissions in the public sector by 75% by 2037, HV-HR must surely be the strategy for low energy, low carbon, healthy buildings?


Gilberts Blackpool developed hybrid ventilation for commercial buildings, with its original MFS unit. Its latest version with heat recovery is claimed to surpass the performance of anything comparable on the market. Gilberts is one of the leading independent air movement specialists, with 60 years heritage and its own purpose-built test laboratory at its 140,000 sq ft head office.


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