How to ventilate my home with a MVHR-unit?

How to ventilate my home with a MVHR-unit in the summer?

On hot summer days, you are naturally inclined to open garden doors and/or windows to cool the house. However, this is not smart when you have a MVHR-unit. Because the windows and doors are wide open, all kinds of (harmful) dust particles enter the house. So keep windows and doors closed in the first place. But how can I cool my house in the summer?

Cooling my home in the summer with a MVHR-unit

A mechanical ventilation MVHR-unit is actually designed to blow the cold outside air filtered and heated into the house. In the summer, of course, the outside air does not need to be heated. How does this work?

If your MVHR-unit has a bypass, you can cool your home in the summer. When the outside temperature in summer is cooler than the inside temperature, the bypass is activated automatically. If you do not have an automatic bypass, you can activate it manually. The MVHR-unit draws in the cooler outside air and transports this air through the bypass. Of course, the air passes through the filters, but not through the heat exchanger. As a result, the cool filtered air is blown directly into the house, which cools the house with clean air. To increase the cooling effect, you can turn on a higher setting.

The MVHR-unit cannot be compared to, for example, an air conditioner. It is therefore best to use the bypass function in the morning, in the evening or at night. The outside temperature is usually a lot lower than during the day. As a result, the cooling effect is the greatest.

How do I know if my unit has a bypass?

The maintenance book of the unit always states whether or not your unit has a bypass. From 1 January 2016, manufacturers of the units are required to build a bypass facility in the unit. It is not the case that every unit will have a working bypass from 2016 onwards, but it is easy to install a bypass on these units.