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home>Mini-ERV
SUSTAINABLE LIVING
Installing a Single Room Energy Recovery Vent
in the kitchen/dining area
Also see my blog from August 2021 about installing another less expensive unit in my bedroom
| October 15, 2014 |
| It is fall in Maine, and a
week or so after the first frost I take down all the window screens and
seal up the house by installing
double
pane interior storm windows. I purchased these well-made units
many years ago, but since then have been encouraging people to
build their own based on a
design
created by my friend Topher Belknap -
here are my instructions. Once these are installed, the house
becomes very tight and I notice that kitchen smells tend to linger for
many hours after cooking since my house does not have a kitchen vent hood. The reason for sealing up the house so tightly in the winter is that temperatures here in Maine remain below freezing for most of December through March and remain very cold from October through May. Here is a chart taken from my personal weather station for the year of 2013 to put this in context:  When I had an energy audit done several years ago, they used a blower door test from which we learned that the air exchange rate for the house was around .35 ACH (Air Changes per Hour) which is at the threshold that ASHRAE consider to be healthful. Since then I have sealed up the leaks around the windows that we identified and I have become concerned about interior air quality in the winter. We may not be getting enough fresh air. |
 I
considered installing a complete fresh air ventilation system in the
house, but it would be expensive (over $5000) and many of the ducts
would have to be installed in soffits around the corners of the rooms
which would be unattractive. I had also
installed a Heat Recovery Ventilation (HRV) system in my workshop in
order to bring warm fresh air into my office in the winter, so I was
familiar with the benefits. In recent years a few European companies
have been selling miniature Energy Recovery Vents (ERV) in the US that
are quite efficient, relatively inexpensive, and easy to install. When
I discovered that
Home Depot were now carrying the
TwinFresh Comfo
model (shown at left) on their website for under $500, I decided to
install one in the kitchen/dining area. You can often find
deals as low as $300. |
 One
distinction between an HRV and and ERV is that an ERV will maintain
humidity inside when it is dry outside in the dead of winter, and this
is a significant issue for us here in Maine where it becomes very dry. The unit I purchased installs in a 6" hole in an outside wall and has a small blower fan that exhausts warm air past a ceramic heat storage element. After 70 seconds the fan pauses briefly and then reverses bringing cool air in past the warmed up ceramic cartridge which heats the incoming air. It can also be set for exhaust or fresh air feed continuously at 3 speeds. To reduce humidity it will come on when the humidity is above 40%RH (low), 50% (medium), or 60% (high). When the humidity drops below the set point, it shuts off - a feature I don't see has much value given the low CFM. Finally there is a night mode which runs the fan at its minimum speed when the interior room is dark. If a single ventilator is installed, when it is removing air from the house cold air has to enter the house from outside through other leaks in the building. Similarly when it is bringing fresh air in, warm air is leaving the house somewhere, so this is not a perfect design. |
  I
received the very colorful box a few days after placing my order on the
Home Depot website and noted the claimed efficiency is 91% at 32°F.
As an energy efficiency maven, I am also impressed that the maximum
power consumption of this device is only 5.61 W with the fan running at
full speed (32 cfm).
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I took everything out of the box and inspected all of the parts, here
they are all lined up. From left to right you have the interior
fan/control module, the ceramic core, air duct and exterior vent cover: Looking closer, here is the hefty (3.5lb) ceramic core with filters on each side and a detail of the honeycomb core structure:   |
The installation was relatively simple. I began by locating studs in
the wall and marking off a spot between the studs for the 6 inch
circular cutout. There are additional cutouts for the connectors and
power cord etc. The images below show the vent and core installed in
the wall and the mounting plate that secures to the wall. I added foam
weatherstrip to the back of the plate rather than squirting in expanding
foam around the interior of the hole as they suggest..jpg)  |
I went outside and cut a hole through the exterior wall and pushed the
duct through and then secured the exterior vent mounting plate over it:.jpg) .jpg) |
Back inside, I was briefly confused by a mention in the manual of
"dowels". I eventually figured out that these are pointed aluminum
alignment pins that attach to the mounting plate and help to guide the
fan assembly onto it. The fan assembly attaches magnetically and also
via two green electrical connectors that feed 120 V power to the unit
via the provided black power cord. (I decided to replace the black cord
with a white one to make it look a little more attractive and I secured
the white cord to the side of the window frame with white nail-down
cable clips.  |
Back outside again, I installed the outside vent cover. I later painted
the cover to match the wood trim on the house..jpg) |
When I plugged in the unit and turned it on using the remote control I
heard a long "beep" and after several seconds I noticed that the
shutters slowly opened up to allow air movement through it. This takes almost a
minute to happen which is surprisingly slow. Similarly when power is
turned off the shutters in the vent slowly close up to seal off
airflow. Here it is opened up fully: |
There are control switches on the right side that offer limited
functionality, but they are hard to reach: It is much simpler to use the remote control which offers a broader range of options:  Page 15 of the manual contains the operating instructions, but leaves out a lot of useful details so I have revised the page and you can download my revised version from here. When I start cooking - I can press the "Air Extract" button to use it as a fume hood since I do not have one in the kitchen. Once the smells have been eliminated, I can switch back to the "Ventilation with Energy Regeneration" mode. I plan to leave it in "Night Mode" so that it will continue to provide fresh air but at a much reduced airflow during the frigid Maine nights. Apparently the unit detects ambient light and switches to Night Mode automatically when the room is dark - this coincides with the coldest night time temperatures and a reduced need for fresh air. It is a well conceived feature for this device. |
| Some Improvements |
| When I originally bench tested
the assembled vent, I noticed that there is a dim orange power light
that does come on when it is activated but there is no indication of the
direction of airflow. Since I plan to use this both as an ERV to bring
in fresh air and also as a kitchen ventilator to remove odors, it is
important for us to know which direction the airflow is going. So I
decided to install an LED that would light up red
when air is being exhausted and green when
fresh air is coming in. As an electrical engineer who designs products
for a living, I had no trepidations about taking the unit apart and
looking for a place to wire in a bicolor LED. Inside the fan assembly I found a circuit board that controls the fan speed and direction and noted that it also has sensors for ambient light, humidity and a receiver for the remote control. By probing around with a voltmeter I determined that three of the four wires that feed the fan could be used to drive a bicolor LED.   |
I installed the LED so that it pokes up
through a hole I drilled in the housing. For the technically inclined,
here is a schematic of the connections that I made. Click on the image
to see a PDF schematic document.  |
I wired the LED to turn
red when stale air is leaving the house and
green when fresh air is coming in:  |
| When I used the remote control, I was disappointed to find that it only worked within 6 feet or so and you had to point it directly at the vent to get it to work, this is unacceptable. When I had opened up the case to add the LED above I had noticed the IR sensor for the remote and light sensors near the end of the circuit board. So I decided to cut out the case to allow infrared light from the remote control and ambient light for the light sensor to get into the case. To hide the visible electronics I used a piece of theatrical gel made by LEE Filters ( blue frost 221). I tested this white diffusion filter carefully to ensure that it would pass infrared. Many clear and milky colored plastics block infrared completely as does white paper. Now the remote control works from over 20 feet away, but you do have to point it directly at the vent. |
  |
Here is a detailed overview of my modifications:  I jacketed the light sensor and the bi-color LED with black heat shrink tubing to prevent the LED from casting light onto the light sensor and giving it a false read of the ambient light. |
| Performance Testing |
Anyone reading my website knows that I am a geek and
I am proud of it! Within minutes of installing the
TwinFresh Comfo I
deployed my
HOBO data logger with four temperature sensors. I placed one sensor
on the inside of the vent and one on the outside and additional sensors
to measure the ambient temperature in the room and outside..jpg) .jpg) |
| Here is a chart spanning six minutes with temperature
readings taken every second at 7am with the outdoor temperature hovering
around freezing. This shows the 70 second cycle as the fan reverses
back and forth. Note that the interior room temperature is 60°F
(thermostat set back for the night) and the
air entering the room varies between 53°F and 60°F effectively gaining
15°F as it is warmed by the ceramic core, but not dropping more than 6°F
below the interior room temperature. Interpreting the chart. Looking at the red line that represents the temperature of the probe taped to the inside surface of the vent (photo above left). The downward slope indicates incoming airflow as heat is released from the ceramic core. The fan reverses, and the upward slope of the red line indicates heat building up in the ceramic core and being stored there for the next cycle.  |
| As a reminder, here is the graphic showing the energy
cycle of the ventilator: And here is a thermal image time-lapse video showing the whole cycle. The hot spot at top right is the vent opening actuator which stays warm. Watch the temperature reading in the center. |
| Night mode |
|
According to the instructions, if you press
the "Night Mode" button on the remote control, "the ventilator is
switched to low speed on a signal from built-in light sensor".
The vent emits a long beep and turns off the orange indicator light
briefly to indicate that night mode is active. Pressing the
night mode button again causes the vent to emit a short beep
indicating that the mode has been disabled.
I like the idea behind this feature because it gets extremely cold at
night here in Maine in the winter and there is no real need to bring in
slightly cooler air fresh at night when there is no one in the room. I
thought I would test this feature and turned off the lights at night and
noticed that the fan slowed down at the next cycle.
Looking closer we see the transition in more detail:
Watching the unit at night, I noticed that the orange indicator
light goes off for several seconds when the fan changes
direction and presumably the device is detecting ambient
light at this point.
The room needs to be really dark before it will switch over to night
mode, the moment the sun rose in the morning it switched back to
full speed:
This data was sampled at one second intervals so the
spikes in the charts represent the brief power surges and sags
at the moment that the fan starts and stops.
|