Helllllllllllllllo Winter! ( Edmonton )

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by bassman

Is that your fresh air intake? Is it touching anything? Is there anything directly below it?

You can buy pipe insulation/wrap to keep that from happening.

If all is clear around it and under it you shouldn't have to worry about it. You might want to place a container of some kind under it to catch any water that might drip on the floor.

It's the vent that goes from the HRV over to the furnace intake, so it is an intake of sorts but I thought it was supposed to have recovered SOME heat from the outgoing air it's exchanging. I know I can get wrapping, and if it's needed I'll just go do it, but I was assuming that this thing was installed properly. The vents that go the HRV from the outside are completely wrapped.

It's more the fact that it will drip right onto my electrical panel that concerns me. I guess it's not really clear in the perspective of the photo but that pipe is right butted up against the wall which means it overlaps the electrical box.

I think I'm going to make a service call to the installers just to ensure things are correct - I suppose that this IS extreme weather so who knows what's "normal" in these circumstances.

On the plus side, all my windows are dry. Not even condensation. Before the HRV I would have had 1/2" of ice on them by now.

[bassman]

Excuse my ignorance but what is a HRV?

[Delphinus]

Sorry - Heat Recovery Ventilator. It's a heat exchanger that's increasing the inside/outside air turnover in my house (swapping inside air for outside air, but preheating in the incoming air using the heat from the outgoing air). I was having some terrible humidity issues in my house and this was my last ditch attempt to get that under control. Basically a bathroom fan to suck air out, but takes two extra steps - one to replace the air it removes, and two to preheat that air so that the furnace isn't reheating the air. So although it's a bump in energy consumption, it's not a huge waste of energy consumption to keep humidity at bay.

Originally Posted by bassman

Excuse my ignorance but what is a HRV?

[bassman]

Hmm, interesting. I have no experience with those so I have nothing intelligent to contribute LOL. Do you have a humdifier on your furnace? I used to have a sef contained de-humidifier that worked great, but it sucked power too.

[Delphinus]

Oh yeah, but I've had that thing shutoff since a few months after we moved in. I had a hardwood guy who came in to do some warrantee work on the flooring lecture me about how it was "way too humid in here." Geeez it's just a couple of aquariums in the basement!

[bassman]

I can relate, my last home was the same way.

I would definitely call a service tech about it. Being that it WILL drip on your electrical panel I would get that rectified as soon as possible.

[adidas]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Oh yeah, but I've had that thing shutoff since a few months after we moved in. I had a hardwood guy who came in to do some warrantee work on the flooring lecture me about how it was "way too humid in here." Geeez it's just a couple of aquariums in the basement!

lol surprised they did the work as high humidity usually voids the warranty.

[Delphinus]

Ah...well, luckily it wasn't humidity damage that they were supposed to be fixing. But still I was like.. "you guys make a huge stinking deal about not wanting your floors exposed too low of a humidity, and here you are lecturing me about having humidity." I sort of wonder if these place just like to whine. "Customers are so awful." ("Oh, here's the problem, you insisted on having this floor installed on a day ending in 'y'." )