Ventilation

Ventilation: When creating an energy-efficient, airtight home through air sealing techniques, it's very important to consider ventilation. Unless properly ventilated, an airtight home can seal in indoor air pollutants. Ventilation also helps control moisture-another important consideration for a healthy, energy-efficient home. To ensure adequate ventilation, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) says that a home's living area should be ventilated at a rate of 0.35 air changes per hour or 15 cubic feet per person per minute, whichever is greater.

Purpose of Ventilation:Your home needs ventilation—the exchange of indoor air with outdoor air—to reduce indoor pollutants, moisture, and odors. Contaminants such as formaldehyde, volatile organic compounds, and radon can accumulate in poorly ventilated homes, causing health problems. Excess moisture in a home can generate high humidity levels. High humidity levels can lead to mold growth and structural damage to your home.

Ventilation Strategies: There are three basic ventilation strategies Natural Ventilation, Whole House Ventilation and Spot Ventilation:

Natural Ventilation Is uncontrolled air movement into a home through cracks, small holes, and vents, such as windows and doors. Not recommended for tightly sealed homes. Natural ventilation used to be the most common ventilation method of allowing fresh outdoor air to replace indoor air in a home. Today it's usually not the best ventilation strategy, especially for homes that are properly air sealed for energy efficiency. Natural ventilation also usually doesn't provide adequate moisture control .

Natural ventilation occurs when there is uncontrolled air movement or infiltration through cracks and small holes in a home—the same ones you want to seal to make your home more energy efficient. Opening windows and doors also provides natural ventilation. Because of central heating and cooling systems, however, most people don't open windows and doors as often. Therefore, air infiltration has become the principal mode of natural ventilation in homes.

A home's natural ventilation rate is unpredictable and uncontrollable—you can't rely on it to ventilate a house uniformly. Natural ventilation depends on a home's air-tightness, outdoor temperatures, wind, and other factors. Therefore, during mild weather, some homes may lack sufficient natural ventilation for pollutant removal. Tightly sealed and/or built homes may have insufficient natural ventilation most of the time, while homes with high air infiltration rates may experience high energy costs.

Whole-House Ventilation: The definition of “whole house ventilation” by the US Department of Energy is, “Controlled air movement using one or more fans and duct systems.” The decision to use a whole-house ventilation system is typically motivated by concerns that natural ventilation won't provide adequate air quality, even with source control by spot ventilation . Whole-house ventilation systems provide controlled, uniform ventilation throughout a house. These systems use one or more fans and duct systems to exhaust stale air and/or supply fresh air to the house. There are four types of systems with basic summaries listed below.

Spot Ventilation: Controlled air movement using localized exhaust fans to quickly remove pollutants and moisture at their source. Typically used in conjunction with one of the other strategies listed above. These fans are typically installed in bathrooms and kitchens.