Does the quality of air in your home rank up there with the finish level of your counter tops? Maybe it should. To certify a home for even the basic level of Green or Performance building certification, a fresh air exchange is required. This is usually a fan in a utility room that is just blowing out stale air from the interior of the home and pulls in fresh air from the exterior. The downside to this is that on a 30 degree day, it is pulling in 30 degree air to your already comfortable 72 degree home. This makes your furnace work extra to heat up this cold fresh air. In addition, these fans are not balancing an equal amount of air being pulled from the home with an equal amount of air being drawn in. This can pressurize the home, potentially pulling air through unintended areas.
What you should be asking your builder for is a Heat-Recovery Ventilator or HRV. The HRV also brings in that 30 degree air, except it uses the heat in the outgoing stale air to warm up the fresh air. Depending on the model, HRVs can recover up to 85 percent of the heat in the outgoing airstream, making these ventilators a lot easier on your budget than opening a few windows.
Using a small fan, the HRV system maintains a continuous flow of filtered outdoor air in the home. To avoid pressurization the system removes an equal amount of stale, used air from the home, especially the kitchen and bathrooms where moisture and odors are heavy. These systems can change the entire air system in a home in under 3 hours.
HRVs are ideal for tight, moisture-prone homes, like here in the Northwest, because they replace the humid air with dry, fresh air. That is why an HRV is a standard feature in every Marnella Home. For the long term health of your family and home, shouldn’t you expect this of your next home?
Marnella Homes is an Oregon based home building company building energy efficeint high performance homes ranging in price from $200k to $400k. 
From your previous post you said that HVACs should not be located in the garage. However Im curious to know if there’s a way to install a HRV in the garage in such a way that inlet air still comes from outside the house?
Wow, I’m not familiar with HRV but now you definitely got my interest. I’ll look up more information on this, it could be a huge benefit for potential buyers to know more about this.
Very interesting post. I’ve never heard of HRV, but like Maui, i will definitely be looking into them more not only for customers/clients, but for my own home! Thanks
I can highly recommend Heat-recovery ventilator, it is both very economic and healthy for your family.
Sounds good to me, however we rarely use air coditioning right now we have 36c and use the best air conditioning available ie having all the windows open. However it does make sense to have the best available air in your house
I think it will be a selling point. Anything that will improve the “living” conditions of a home and save money is a good thing.
I have heard of heat recover boilers, which the principal is the same except with water, but not a heat recovery ventilator. Interesting information. Thanks for posting.
While we don’t have the same temperature fluctuations here in California, the clean air is important to me. My daughter is sensitive to pollutants so I would rather have clean air than a granite counter. (now that I mention it granite isn’t that great anyway
Great post, thanks for the info on HRV’s. Definitely something to consider…..
Thank you for all of your comments. I appreciate hearing from you.
John, these units are recommended to be installed in a conditioned space. So, if installed in a garage, a conditioned closet/cabinet would be necessary for the installation with sealed ducting to an exterior wall. However, installed near the furnace in a conditioned interior space is preferred. I hope this answers your question.
Stale air is a big pet peeve of mine but it’s hard to find a solution. Opening the window to get fresh air works during certain times of the year but in the winter, you lose your heat, and in the summer, you lose your a/c. I’m very interested to know there is a solution out there that would provide fresh air while taking energy efficiency into account.
That’s one thing I hate about the winter is being couped up inside the house with stale air. While fresh air is important in terms of CO2-Oxygen exchange I would also say that a good air filtration system can go a long way towards making the air more breathable for those who can’t afford a fresh air exchange system
Clean air is also very important for me and my family but, because we are living in a highly polluted area, the quality of the air is very low. We tried several methods to improve this but we didn’t succeed so far.
Patel