Anyone have any experience of Duco Ducobox Energy MVHR?

[Adsibob]

Trying to finalise my choice of MVHR unit. My main concern is to get something that is as quiet as possible. I know quietness is as much dependent upon the quality of the installation and where it is installed, and I think I have that covered in that I am hoping to install in the corner of my loft space, mounting the unit on an external brick wall, and that space is not adjacent to any bedrooms or living areas (it is just adjacent to a bathroom). But surely choice of unit plays a factor as well.

 

Amongst my research I came across a Duco unit sold by BPC called the Ducobox Energy. What apparently makes this unique is that it has a two-zone system. BPC describe it as follows:

 

A huge factor in the quietness of the system is that 2-zone system, as it reads where you are in your home and what needs ventilated you will not notice the system working. For example, at night, the unit will extract from areas such as your kitchen that are not being used, which ensures that the habitable rooms at that time such as bedrooms, will have no noise disruption.

 

I had thought the best way of setting up the two-zone system would be for bathrooms, utility and kitchen to be zone 1 and the rest of the house to be on zone 2, as this would address my concern that whenever somebody had a shower or boosted to clear cooking smells, the unit's boost would be heard in the bedroom. We also run our tumble drier in the utility room overnight, so don't want the boost to kick in from that being heard in the bedrooms. However, on further research it appears that the zones need to be more "geographic", i.e. by location of the room rather than by its function. As the bathrooms are on the same floor as the bedrooms, segregating the bathroom ventilation from the bedroom ventilation probably isn't possible. It would however allow me to segregate the utility and kitchen from the bedrooms, so it would at least address part of my concern.

 

Does anybody have any experience of this system?

[MJNewton]

45 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

Does anybody have any experience of this system?

 

I don't, but I'm wondering if they are overplaying the noise issue somewhat? My unit is nothing fancy (Titon HRV1.25 Q Plus) and I don't have any issues whatsoever with noise. It is mounted on the gable wall in the loft of a 2007 Persimmon-house which aren't known for great noise blocking construction. It sits on some old exhaust hanger rubbers which likely helps. Attenuation of the ducts (for balancing) is done at the manifold (unit) end rather than at the ceiling vents so that may help somewhat at the rooms end. Certainly we don't hear anything in the rooms apart from when boosting but that's not intrusive by any stretch (just airflow; no fan noise or anything) and believe me my wife would make it known if it was! ?

Edited February 1, 2021 by MJNewton

[Adsibob]

12 minutes ago, MJNewton said:

 

I don't, but I'm wondering if they are overplaying the noise issue somewhat? My unit is nothing fancy (Titon HRV1.25 Q Plus) and I don't have any issues whatsoever with noise. It is mounted on the gable wall in the loft of a 2007 Persimmon-house which aren't known for great noise blocking construction. It sits on some old exhaust hanger rubbers which likely helps. Attenuation of the ducts (for balancing) is done at the manifold (unit) end rather than at the ceiling vents so that may help somewhat at the room end. Certainly we don't hear anything in the room apart from when boosting but that's not intrusive by any stretch and believe me my wife would make it known if it was! ?

Thanks @MJNewton, that's helpful. Could you clarify what you mean by "Attenuation of the ducts (for balancing)"? Sorry I'm a bit of a novice with this. What exactly is attenuation of the ducts for and is that a particular feature of the Titon HRV1.25 Q Plus, or can all units be set up that way? Thanks!

[MJNewton]

Basically, given you've got different duct lengths and rooms with different flow rate requirements (eg large rooms vs small rooms, kitchens vs bathrooms vs en suites etc) then you need to 'balance' the flow rate to each vent to give that which is desired. It's not too dissimilar to balancing radiators but instead of throttling the lockshield valves you throttling the ducts by either screwing/unscrewing the outlet plate or, increasingly common, putting in restrictor rings inside the ducts where they join the manifold (the bit where it branches out from a single large duct to the smaller individual room ducts). The latter can be a bit trickier (opening up the ductwork, swapping rings in and out) but does mean reducing a potential source of noise (throttling airflow increases noise) by doing it well away from the rooms.

 

There's loads of information about, but have a start with this thread:

 

Edited February 1, 2021 by MJNewton

[MikeGrahamT21]

Take a look on eBay, some good units on there at the moment, for good prices!