Show me your dirty MVHR photos

[readiescards]

Ok so I'm cleaning my unit after 12 months instead of recommended 6 months. But I'm amazed to find cobwebs and spiders INSIDE the unit!

 

What do other people's mvhr systems look like before cleaning please?

 

Also any tips on how to clean the fan blades please. Toothbrush and soft paint brush sort of works but tedious

[Bitpipe]

I have same unit and it looked similarly grimey, especially the summer bypass unit.

 

I just went at everything internal with the soft brush on a hoover, then a damp cloth and then a dry cloth. 

[ProDave]

I cleaned mine after a year.  I was surprised how clean everything is.  The filters just had a light grey coating of what looks just like "household dust" .  Since it was all so dry I just hoovered the filters to clean them and put it all back together.

 

Probably the hardest bit to clean was the outside air inlet grill.  the fixed stainless steel louvres made it very hard to get a paint bush in to clean the gauze.

 

It struck me when cleaning that inlet grill, how very useful it would be if you could temporarily reverse the fan direction so the inlet grill was blowing out.

[Onoff]

8 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I cleaned mine after a year.  I was surprised how clean everything is.  The filters just had a light grey coating of what looks just like "household dust" .  Since it was all so dry I just hoovered the filters to clean them and put it all back together.

 

Probably the hardest bit to clean was the outside air inlet grill.  the fixed stainless steel louvres made it very hard to get a paint bush in to clean the gauze.

 

It struck me when cleaning that inlet grill, how very useful it would be if you could temporarily reverse the fan direction so the inlet grill was blowing out.

 

Must help having nice clean air up there to start off with.

[dpmiller]

I checked our filters after about four months..

.

 

Intake on the left. Loads of tiny tiny flies, and I fear the brown tint is caused by the amount of slurry dispensed locally. Loads of horses nearby too. The exhaust side is all concrete dist off the (unsealed) subfloor.

[Jeremy Harris]

The chamber on the outside of both filters gets a bit grubby, especially the intake side.  The room extract side gets a bit of fine dust in the chamber, but far less than the intake side.  I also find loads of dead flies, spiders etc in the intake side chamber, before the filter, and the filter always looks pretty grim.  Here's a photo comparing a new intake filter with one that's been used for 6 months:

 

 

I took the heat exchanger out this summer, to check it and wash it if needed, but found that it seemed very clean, so just put it back.  I suspect that the filters in the Genvex do a good job of keeping stuff out of the heat exchanger, especially the one on the intake side (the intake has an F7 pollen filter, the extract has a G4 dust filter).

[readiescards]

@JSHarris wow your intake filter sure working hard/ doing a good job.

 

I fitted the extra intake filter box from @bpc ventilation seems to work ok but still amazed little flies are dead in the unit or come out of the vents alive. And the spider was definitely alive inside the unit - feeding on all the little flies going by I guess!