EZ Breathe systems

jac34

I had one of these units installed in my basement when I had my french drain done.

I know these are supposed to help with the humidity in the basement, but do they really replace dehumidifiers? I noticed it ran most of the time in the summer but my digital thermometer still showed high humidity and I had to run dehumidifier anyway. I thought this would be the answer to lower electric bills compared to dehumidifier?

Jamie Hall

Um... sorry. It's not a dehumidifier and won't function as one. It's a ventilation system. It may, in many situations, reduce the humidity in the basement -- that's what it's intended to do -- but won't do much for the rest of the hous.

jac34

Thanks! I'm just talking about the basement humidity, not the rest of the house. Just trying to control any mold that could occur. The way it was explained on install is that it would minimize the need for dehumidifiers at much less electricity. Maybe it helped the dehumidifiers, but it certainly didn't eliminate them!

BillW

Heat recovery ventilators recover sensible heat and tend to dry the space they serve, but they are NOT dehumidifiers. Energy recovery ventilators recover both sensible and latent heat and tend to balance humidity, but aren't dehumidifiers, either.

mikeg2015

A HRV might have worked better that’s ERV in some situations as you often don’t want to transfer moisture you are removing. Only the snesible heat.

You have to decide if recovering moisture is good or not. For a damp base,ent it’s usually not. But a dehumidifier is usually better because it puts waste heat back into the space to allow more moisture removal and raise ambient temp.

With low gas prices a mini absorber dehumidifier would be nice.

Jamie Hall

I've tried ERV in a few applications -- and switched them out pretty quickly for HRVs. For a simple, but non-obvious reason: yes, they return more heat because they return the latent as well as sensible -- but while they are doing that they also return a good bit of any odours and bacteriaand mold and virus which is present in the building. This is not usually desirable...