What Is An Air Exchanger?

Did you know that your home’s air may be up to 100 times more polluted than outdoor air? Dust, excess humidity, chemicals and household substances can be harming you and your family. A Broan (formerly Venmar) whole-home air exchanger helps improve your indoor air quality.

Exchange The Air In Your Home For A Healthier Environment

“Good air in, bad air out” is the simple solution to improving your air quality. This can be achieved by installing a Broan heat recovery ventilation (HRV) with or without a High-Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filtration option from Standard Heating & Air Conditioning.

Advantages of An HRV

•    Continuous fresh air exchange, while expelling polluted air and replacing it with healthier air 24/7
•    Humidity control; especially important for today’s well-sealed homes
•    You’ll capture virtually all dust and harmful micro-particles (see HEPA below)
•    Reduces allergy and asthma symptoms and recurring colds

HEPA Filters

You may have heard of the HEPA filter, which stands for High Efficiency Particulate Air. The HEPA filter, which must meet the strictest governmental guidelines (read more below), can be installed in virtually any Twin Cities home by Standard Heating.

Air Exchanger Options

Since each home and each family’s needs are different, Standard heating will recommend and install the Broan air exchanger that’s right for you.  There are three types of air exchangers:

• Heat recovery ventilation (HRV) is used for winter ventilation
• Energy recovery ventilation (ERV) is used for year round ventilation, reducing window condensation and improves indoor air quality.
• HEPA filtration offers added filtration and the benefits of an HRV or ERV.

More About HEPA Filters

HEPA filters are used in medical facilities, automobiles, aircraft, and homes. The filter must satisfy certain standards of efficiency such as those set by the United States Department of Energy (DOE). To qualify as HEPA by government standards, an air filter must remove 99.97% of all particles greater than 0.3 micrometer from the air that passes through them. HEPA filters are composed of a mat of randomly arranged fibers. The fibers have diameters between 0.5 and 2.0 micrometers.

The common assumption is that a HEPA filter acts like a sieve where particles smaller than the largest opening can pass through – but this is incorrect. Unlike membrane filters at this pore size, where particles as wide as the largest opening or distance between fibers cannot pass in between them at all, HEPA filters are designed to target much smaller pollutants and particles. These particles are trapped (they stick to a fiber) through a combination of the following three mechanisms:

1. Interception, where particles following a line of flow in the air stream come within one radius of a fiber and adhere to it.
2. Impaction, where larger particles are unable to avoid fibers by following the curving contours of the air stream and are forced to embed in one of them directly; this effect increases with diminishing fiber separation and higher air flow velocity.
3. Diffusion, an enhancing mechanism that is a result of the collision with gas molecules by the smallest particles, especially those below 0.1 µm in diameter, which are thereby impeded and delayed in their path through the filter; this behavior is similar to Brownian motion and raises the probability that a particle will be stopped by either of the two mechanisms above; it becomes dominant at lower air flow velocities.

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