Modern homes are energy-efficient and airtight. This helps reduce heating costs, but it also means that fresh air no longer enters the building through random gaps and leaks as it did in older houses.
People continuously produce carbon dioxide and moisture indoors. Additional humidity and odours are created by cooking, showering and other everyday activities.
The purpose of ventilation is to supply fresh air to living spaces and remove used, humid and polluted air.
Signs of poor ventilation can include a stuffy bedroom in the morning, moisture remaining in the bathroom for a long time, condensation on windows or simply a feeling that the indoor air is heavy.
Good ventilation should work so well that the occupants do not need to think about it in everyday life.
One of the most common mistakes is to start planning ventilation with the question: “Which ventilation unit should I buy?”
The first question should actually be: how much air does each room need, and how should the air move through the house?
Bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, toilets, and storage rooms all have different functions and different ventilation needs.
A person may spend many hours continuously in a bedroom, and sufficient fresh air must be provided even when the door is closed. In a bathroom, rapid removal of moisture is important. Kitchens generate odours and humidity. A rarely used storage room requires considerably less ventilation than a bedroom.
Only after the needs of each room have been determined can the correct ductwork, air distribution system and ventilation unit be selected.
In a ventilation system, fresh air is usually supplied to living spaces, while used air is extracted from kitchens, bathrooms, toilets and other rooms with higher humidity or pollutant loads.
It is also important to consider how air moves between rooms.
If a bedroom door is closed, the supply air must still have a way to leave the room. Otherwise, pressure differences may develop, and the actual airflow may be lower than designed.
One option is to use transfer openings under doors or dedicated transfer air elements. Another option is to design both supply and extract air for the room.
The latter provides more possibilities for controlling ventilation and reduces dependence on open doors or large gaps under doors.
We often spend seven to nine hours continuously in a bedroom. If the door is closed at night and ventilation is insufficient, the carbon dioxide level in the room can increase quickly.
For this reason, bedroom ventilation should not be designed only according to the total airflow of the entire house.
The number of occupants and the actual air demand of each bedroom should be considered separately.
A good ventilation solution must provide enough fresh air even when the bedroom door is closed at night.
Flexible plastic air distribution ductwork is increasingly used in modern private houses.
The principle is simple: air moves from the ventilation unit to a distribution box and from there through separate ducts to individual rooms.
This type of system has several advantages.
The ducts can be installed inside floors, suspended ceilings, or insulation layers. Each room has its own airflow route, making the system easier to design and balance. Separate duct runs can also help reduce sound transmission from one room to another through the ventilation system.
The diameter and number of ducts must be selected according to the required airflow. Forcing a large volume of air through ducts that are too small increases air velocity, pressure loss, and noise.
One of the most common questions is: “Can you hear the ventilation?”
A properly designed and adjusted system should be very quiet during normal operation.
Noise does not depend only on the ventilation unit. It is also affected by duct diameter, air velocity, operating mode, silencers, distribution boxes, and air terminals.
If too much air is forced through a small duct or valve, more noise will inevitably be created.
The ventilation system should therefore be dimensioned so that the required airflow can be achieved with reasonably low air velocities.
Heat recovery ventilation helps reduce energy consumption
During winter, it would be inefficient to simply exhaust warm indoor air and replace it with cold outdoor air.
A heat recovery ventilation unit uses the heat contained in the outgoing air to warm the incoming fresh air.
This means that the fresh air entering the building is considerably warmer than the outdoor air, reducing the amount of work required from the building’s heating system.
However, a ventilation unit should not be selected only according to its maximum airflow or heat recovery efficiency.
The entire system must be considered: the airflow at which the unit normally operates, pressure losses in the ductwork, system noise and the way the ventilation is controlled.
The ventilation demand of a house is not constant throughout the day.
At night, people are in the bedrooms. In the morning, bathrooms are used. During the day, many rooms may be empty. In the evening, people usually spend more time in the living room and kitchen.
Traditional ventilation often ventilates different rooms according to relatively similar operating logic.
Demand-controlled ventilation is becoming increasingly common. In such systems, ventilation responds to actual indoor air quality, humidity or room usage.
A further step is room-based ventilation, where airflow can be controlled separately in each individual room.
The AIRI solution installed by Tuular works according to this principle. AIRI room sensors monitor the indoor conditions in each room, while motorised valves inside the AIRI FlowBox allow airflow to be adjusted according to the actual demand of each room.
This means that the entire house does not need to be ventilated in the same way when the actual demand exists only in certain rooms.
Even an excellent design and high-quality components do not automatically guarantee a properly functioning ventilation system.
After installation, the system must be commissioned, adjusted, and balanced.
During balancing, actual airflows are measured in the rooms, and the system is adjusted according to the design values.
Without proper balancing, one room may receive too much air while another receives too little. Unwanted pressure differences may also occur.
For this reason, completing a ventilation system should include not only the installation of ductwork and equipment, but also commissioning, airflow measurement, and final adjustment.
The best time to plan ventilation is before construction starts, or at the latest before ceilings and building structures are closed.
The earlier ventilation is taken into account in the building design, the easier it is to find suitable locations for the ventilation unit, distribution boxes, main ducts and room ducts.
Early planning helps avoid situations where a ventilation duct later needs to pass through a structural beam, different building systems compete for the same ceiling space, or insufficient maintenance space is left around the ventilation unit.
Ventilation should be part of the building’s complete technical design, not the final system for which space is found after everything else has already been installed.
For the customer, the process is easiest when design, materials, installation and commissioning are handled as one complete solution.
Tuular provides ventilation solutions for private houses throughout the entire process:
• analysis of house plans and initial data;
• ventilation design;
• selection of the ventilation unit and materials;
• supply and installation of plastic air distribution ductwork;
• installation of the ventilation unit and system components;
• commissioning, adjustment and balancing of the system;
• preparation of a ventilation report when required.
This means the customer does not need to find a separate designer, equipment supplier and ventilation installer.
The ventilation unit is an important part of the system, but the quality of the indoor climate depends on the entire ventilation solution.
A properly designed system takes into account room usage, the number of occupants, airflow paths, duct dimensions, noise, energy consumption and system control.
When these decisions are made correctly from the beginning, ventilation becomes a technical system that is almost unnoticeable in everyday life.
And that is exactly how good ventilation should work.
Send us your house plan or existing ventilation design. We will review the solution and can provide ventilation materials, design, installation and a complete turnkey ventilation system.
