Homes are full of pollutants, from cooking fumes to cleaning chemicals, and if you don’t have a ventilation system that brings outside air in,your HVAC system is simply recirculating those pollutants throughout your home. Think of the home as a bathtub. Breathing recycled air is much the same as using the bath water of the family member before.

   |   Just as we change the bath water, we need to change the air.

The problem is particularly acute for more modern, energy-efficient homes: with little to no air leakages or drafts, there is far less fresh air mixing in with the stale indoor air. Therefore, to ensure you aren’t continually breathing in polluted air, it’s critical to not only incorporate proper ventilation that introduces fresh air from outside, but also to keep air flow throughout your home.

Continuous operation ensures stale indoor air is exchanging with fresh outdoor air regularly, diluting pollutants and contaminants while extracting moisture.

Fresh air appliances do just that — they remove stale air to the outside, bring fresh air in, and filter it. This helps dilute pollutants and keeps air flow. It is also conserving as much energy as possible from the tempered air leaving your home.

They say, it is simpler to open windows on opposite sides of the room to bring in fresh air and keep it moving; however, the air coming in through windows is unfiltered, therefore bringing its own set of pollutants. A set of filters in your fresh air appliance captures outdoor pollutants before they enter the interior space.

If you already have such an appliance incorporated into your heating or cooling system, it’s important that it be powered on at all times, running in ventilation mode to ensure air the continuing flow of air. Otherwise, having your HVAC system in a stand-by mode defeats the purpose of having a fresh air appliance in the first place.

In this way, the ventilation system is similar to other appliances you’re used to seeing running 24/7. For example, refrigerators must stay powered-on at all times to ensure the cavity stays cold and the food stays fresh. Pond or aquarium pumps run continuously to prevent stagnant water and maintain clean water. Even nature operates this way: The sun shines throughout the day, fueling photosynthesis and countless other elements that sustain life.