Hello all!
First I would like to thank all of you for the amazing content that you put together on this forum. I was reading a lot of threads during the last two weeks and I learned a lot about the MVHR. I am not yet an expert so for this reason I would like to ask your advice for designing an MVHR system.
We are traveling a lot for work and last year we got an assignment in Vienna, Austria. Since we are planning to stay for at least 10 years in here, we decided to buy a property and to renovate it.
It is a 110 m2 house built in 1965 with solid 40 cm brick walls, renovated in 2018 with 20 cm graphite EPS insulation (facade), triple glazed windows, ceiling and screed also insulated . We did not run a blow test on it but it looks like it is pretty tight built (I am sure not perfect....). The previous owner told us that the insulation is very effective but the downside of it is that the house is not "breathing" like before. We had a ventilation system in our property in UK and I really want to install one in this house since we have two kids and I think the indoor air quality is super important.
We contacted a local company to do the project and they quoted us 12000 EUR using a Zehnder q350 system and Heatpex Aria piping. However after we have started they got back to us and they wanted to increase the project cost with almost 9000 EUR at which point I said no and decided to try to complete the project by myself. I am confident in doing all the installation by myself and I already made the holes in the concrete ceiling plate and installed the vents, each of them having two ports for 90mm pipes.
I attached a plan of the house with the installed air vents locations (this was provided by the original vendor) and the proposed piping connections. I did the calculations for the air flow requirements best of my knowledge and using the info from this forum but I still have some questions, as expected.... In Austria I do not need to go through an approval process from the construction authorities so I am pure and simple looking to design a good system that will fit the purpose. I am sure that you will have good feedback on this based on your experience.
I would like to get your advice on the following:
1. Based on my calculations the intake flow is approx 76 m3/h and the exhaust is approx 113 m3/h. For the system to be balanced these values should be the same so obviously I will need either to increase the flow of the air coming in or reduce the exhaust. My question is in which location should I do this.
2. The kitchen and living room are actually a shared space. There are two intake and two exhaust vents on each side of the shared space. Should the flow for these vents be the same so the air flow is balanced for this location?
3. In general I am planning to run one 90mm pipe to each of the air vent. Based on my calculation for the velocity and distance I should be OK with this. The distribution boxes for this systems have eight connecting ports (so 8 for intake and 8 for exhaust) so theoretically I could double the pipes for 3 intake and 3 exhaust vents. I was thinking to do this for at least the bathroom exhaust and Bedroom 2 which are 3m long. It will be great if you could tell me if this is enough.
4. The original vendor planned an exhaust on the hallway (not a humid space) which might provide a good air movement from the bedrooms. In my opinion this is logical for me but I would love to hear your opinions. The vent is already installed so the worst I could to is to change it to an intake but the distance between this vent and the exhaust in the WC might create a local air motion only.
5. The kitchen already has a hood vent installed above the stove with exhaust outside the building. I would like to keep it if possible and start it on during heavy cooking only. I know this will create an imbalance between the intake and exhaust but I was wondering if this might be OK for short periods of time only. Otherwise I will have to remove the hood cover the exhaust hole in the wall and install a re-circulation/filtration hood.
I apologize for all the questions and I hope I can contribute a bit to the knowledge collection in here.
Thank you!
Ventilation Plan.pdf
MVHR calculation.xlsx