MVHR unit filling with water on external inlet side

[haddock]

Hi there,

 

The colder months are here again and my MVHR is filling with water again, so it's about time I found out what's going on.

 

The bottom-left quadrant of the unit is the external outlet, and that has a condensate drain which seems to be working fine.

 

However there is plenty of water collecting, very cold, at the bottom of the bottom-right quadrant, which is the external inlet. This side doesn't appear to have any form of drainage designed into it.

 

Can anyone shed any light on this? I don't understand why I've got water somewhere that the design doesn't seem to anticipate.

 

Thanks for any thoughts

[PeterW]

Which unit is it..?

 

Any installation photos ..?

[haddock]

Knew I should have taken some pics while I had the cover off!

 

Here's a picture with the cover on... it's a Renovent HR from Brink Climate Systems. More popular on the continent than here, I think.

 

[jack]

35 minutes ago, haddock said:

The colder months are here again and my MVHR is filling with water again, so it's about time I found out what's going on.

 

The bottom-left quadrant of the unit is the external outlet, and that has a condensate drain which seems to be working fine.

 

However there is plenty of water collecting, very cold, at the bottom of the bottom-right quadrant, which is the external inlet. This side doesn't appear to have any form of drainage designed into it.

 

Can anyone shed any light on this? I don't understand why I've got water somewhere that the design doesn't seem to anticipate.

 

Thanks for any thoughts

 

I had a very similar problem with my Brink Excellent 400, although I don't recall whether I posted about it. Similar location, and similarly no drain designed for that area (although I think that different versions of this model may actually have their condensate drain on this side, looking at the shape of the mouldings). I have a vague recollection that Renovent and Brink have some sort of relationship - might be badge engineering of some sort going on. [Just re-read your post and noticed you mentioned this yourself!]

 

To me, it appeared that condensation was working its way along joins in the internal insulation mouldings after tracking down the side of the heat exchanger.

 

I eventually contacted Brink (in the Netherlands) about it. To their credit, despite the fact that I'd had the unit for 4 years, they sent out a local guy to take a look. He applied a thin strip along the ridge that the heat exchanger sits on, which has flaps that stick out just enough to direct any condensate over the joins and into the drainage area. I haven't noticed any issues since then, although to be fair we haven't had cold weather since the fix.

 

Do you have photos of the inside of your unit?

[haddock]

Okay, here's some pics of the inside. The problem is on that right hand side where there's about 1-2cm of water currently. It'll overflow soon. The second pic is with the exchanger pulled halfway out — is that where the Brink guy placed the strip? I can't imagine how it would get the water over to the left-hand side.

 

They make mirror images of the units so it makes sense that the mouldings would have versions with condensate drain on the other side.

[jack]

Not exactly the same as mine on the inside, but possibly some similarities.

I'm heading out for the evening now, but if I have time this weekend I'll try and take some photos of the inside of mine to show where I thought it was leaking and what they did to (allegedly, we'll see!) solve the problem.