Low cost Energy Recovery Ventilation System

THE PROJECT

The project is to create a cheap low voltage ERV system for a home with a total internal volume of 265 Meters Cubed. In order to change the air in entirely in 30 minutes, we would need to move 8 Cubic Meters a minute or 280 CFM approximately. The design should easily make this possible based on my experiments give the fan capacity and the duct length. We shall see.

​see the blog here

The control system will be 12 Volt with control and processing handled by an Arduino Mega and a Wemos D1/R2

​

There are 2 position-controlled valves 3 main fans, and 4 boost fans. Experiments show with a 6 Meter 150 mm duct and the main fan and boost fan at maximum we can get a flow in excess of 8 Cubic Metres per Minute.

This is my own record of my ERV home ventilation project. By way of this blog I hope to share my wee project with people who are interested and keep a record for myself as well. The cost is considerably less then HRV's and ERV's on sale in New Zealand and it's been a really interesting project the study up on.

A BIT ABOUT GREENWAY

This is a blog about my ERV project. My background is in industrial automation and control systems and I have recently got interested in home automation. Our system is based on Arduino, Hubitat Elevation and MQTT. I have a gaggle of devices like Sonoff's and Arduino using MQTT, Thinger and occasionally Node-Red for experiments mostly.We wanted a low cost 150 mm system for our home using the most cost-effective parts we could find. I know its made of Coroplast and tape but if it works as I hope it will I will re-engineer some of the components in more durable materials.

THE PROJECT

The project is to create a cheap low voltage ERV system for a home with a total internal volume of 265 Meters Cubed. In order to change the air in entirely in 30 minutes, we would need to move 8 Cubic Meters a minute or 280 CFM approximately. The design should easily make this possible based on my experiments give the fan capacity and the duct length. We shall see.

​

The control system will be 12 Volt with control and processing handled by an Arduino Mega and a Wemos D1/R2

​

There are 2 position-controlled valves 3 main fans, and 4 boost fans. Experiments show with a 6 Meter 150 mm duct and the main fan and boost fan at maximum we can get a flow in excess of 8 Cubic Metres per Minute.