The letter “V” in the acronym “HVAC” stands for the word ventilation. It is ventilation that keeps the air within the house healthy and healthy air is important for a house so that health problems like allergies and other respiratory tract problems can be kept at bay. In fact, the importance of ventilation cannot be negated when it comes to the indoor air quality. When it comes to the basics of ventilation it should be kept in mind that a balance needs to be struck. This is because too little ventilation will result in poor indoor quality air while too much of ventilation in the house will shoot up the heating and cooling loads.

It is true that many of the HVAC systems have an inbuilt ventilation system but the problem with such ventilation system is that they cannot provide balanced ventilation throughout the house. Hence, it is important that homeowners take initiative and arrange for proper ventilation within the house. There are basically three different ways of ventilating a house. They are the following:

Natural Ventilation: This phenomenon takes places in houses by default especially in cases where the houses are not sealed against air leaks. As a result conditioned air moves out through the cracks and leaks. In this case, the air movement cannot be predicted and it depends on a number of factors like the weather, temperature and a lot of other factors. With natural ventilation there is no assurance that all the rooms in the house will be equally ventilated.

Spot Ventilation: This is also called intermittent local ventilation and it is needed in many of the rooms in a house. The places where spot ventilation becomes necessary are the kitchen, the basement, and the bathroom. To put it simply, spot ventilation is required to remove accumulated moisture, odors, and other fumes from a particular room. However, it is not a good idea to ventilate the whole house through spot ventilation.

General Ventilation: This is typically the whole house ventilation. Generally, there are two types of whole house ventilation that is used in residences. They are the Heat Recovery Ventilators and the Energy Recovery Ventilators. In the Heat Recovery Ventilating process, fresh air from the outside is brought into the home while is the stale air from inside is released into the outside air. Thus, the process creates a balanced pressure system.

On the other hand, Energy Recovery Ventilation process the moisture content of the air is modified through the transfer of water vapor from one air stream to the other when fresh air is brought from outside and the stale air is released into the outside air.

It needs to be mentioned here that proper steps need to be taken to ascertain proper ventilation in the house because a well-planned ventilation allows healthy circulation and balance of air, it protects the members of the house from pollutants and at the same time you can check the built up of excess moisture and heat in the house.

Lastly, if it is not possible to arrange for a DIY ventilation process in the house, it is better to get in touch with an HVAC expert who will do the needful.