The commercial space has long had advanced building automations systems to help find the best balance between energy efficiency and human health. But what about residential?
We know that ventilation can be difficult to manage, especially when it comes to humid climates. Not only do we have to consider the building envelope, the existing HVAC equipment, ducting and the outdoor climate, the controls we have in our homes only address temperature. And maaaaaybe relative humidity. That leaves a lot to be desired in our opinion. What's managing the need for ventilation? Who's making sure the filters are being activated when they're needed most? What about that relative humidity setpoint: is that really the best we can do — a relative parameter that supposed to be controlling the moisture in our homes for comfort and preventing mold growth?
What if we could live in spaces that responded to our activities? Like cooking up a storm for our favorite friends, being (more) ok with the bag of stinky sports gear in our kids rooms if they don't clean it out right away, or when we're painting over that god-awful puke green when we move into a new house.
We're here to tell you that we're building out simple, repeatable ways to implement ventilation that avoid doing harm. In order to do this properly, we need to consider the relationship between indoor ventilation, changing outdoor conditions, indoor humidity levels, and energy consumption. All of this can be incredibly hard to balance on a home-by-home basis.
No-harm ventilation: residential demand control ventilation
To stake a claim on RDCV, we've started by providing 2 new automation templates with advanced features that make ventilation easier to implement in hot & humid climates. We're expanding the inputs (what should trigger equipment activations) to make your home safer and provide fresh air when you need it most while ensuring we aren't bringing in worse air than what's inside. While the focus is on ventilation, the equipment we're involving in our templates will ensure your humidity levels are under control, even if the outdoor air we're bringing in is more humid. Filtration is also top of mind.
Introducing our first templates that solve for ventilation, dehumidification AND filtration. We call them the 3 pillar killers ;)
Templates
Check out these two help articles for all the info on these two templates including wiring diagrams, illustrations of how to setup the equipment and more.
Residential Demand Control Ventilation with 1 Controller (2 relays)
- This template is publicly available!
- Connects 1 Controller to a ventilating dehumidifier compressor + motorized damper in an outdoor air duct
Residential Demand Control Ventilation with 2 Controllers (4 relays)
- Please note: this template is currently still in beta. We'll be launching it into production soon though after our testing requirements have been met! Until then, if you want to test you can email lucy@haveniaq.com to get the beta flag added to your account.
- Connects 2 Controllers to a ventilating dehumidifier compressor + fan, motorized damper in an outdoor air duct and central air handler fan
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