Based on temperature alone, it appears that I'm gaining more heat than losing in my HRV. What I'm seeing is the warm air leaving my house dropping by 10C, and the cold air coming in rising by 12C. It would seem I'm getting a bonus 2C of heat from somewhere. Not being a 'free energy nut', there's something else happening and I'm looking for a moderately simple explanation. In addition to heat (watts?) and temperature (C) being different concepts, I suspect it has to do with humidity...
http://flyinglow.ca/furnace/hrv-delta.png
- Stale (warm) air leaving the house gives up some heat as it passes through the HRV. This is indicated by the red line below 0.
- Fresh (cold) air entering the house absorbs some of this heat passing through the HRV. This is the green line above 0.
- The sum is the black line.
The black line is the interesting 'conclusion'. What it is showing is that Tdelta of the fresh air is larger than the Tdelta of the stale air. Which is not what I expected (certainly not in cooler weather).
With real life inefficiencies, I would expect the black line to be below 0 indicating that not all the heat given up by the stale air is being absorbed by the fresh air.
I'm posting this late fall. Outside temperature is < 10C. Inside is ~20C.
The link is a (near) real time monitor of my HRV unit. I have temperature probes in each of the HRV's 4 ports (stale air in & out, fresh air in & out). The probes have a precision of < 0.1C and an accuracy of +/-0.5C. (raw data: http://flyinglow.ca/furnace/hrvday.png). The HRV unit does not mix the 2 sources of air - they are kept separate by a passive heat exchanger.