Panasonic Energy Recovery Ventilator

Panasonic FV-04VE1

For years Panasonic has made the best bathroom fans. Ask anybody who owns one or who has installed one: they make all other bath fans look like cheap toys. Now Panasonic is offering an energy recovery ventilator or ERV : a fan that not only exhausts stale air and excess moisture but supplies fresh air and - this is the important part - keeps the heat from the warm exhaust air inside the house where it belongs. (simple bath fans just blow warm air out, wasting energy)

Like any other quality appliance, this unit is not cheap (online retailers are offering it at around $300.00), but before this unit came on the market most ERVs were about twice the price, bulky and difficult to install, and  hard to find.

Panasonic fans are VERY quiet. I once had a customer call me to say that her recently installed Panasonic bath fan wasn't working: it turned out it was so quiet she couldn't tell that it was on. They are also very well designed with a rough-in housing that allows the working part of the fan to be replaced if necessary without ripping the whole unit out. If you've ever had to replace a bath fan (and most other bath fans fail after a few years), you know what a pain it is.

This fan is designed for continuous use: at 40CFM (that's not much air flow) it would be appropriate for continuous use as mechanical ventilation for a very tight house or for intermittent use as a bath fan with a timer or moisture sensor.

There are many products like this that are not well known...maybe I should create an award of some kind for products like this. What do you think readers?

Moisture: Good and Bad

Moisture inside the house that can range from flowing water (bad unless it's in the shower or sink) to relative humidity in the air (good within a certain range) is a fascinating topic and sometimes counterintuitive. I'm thinking about it right now because I'm about to paint my house and there's an area where the paint never lasts more than a few years. I'll take a picture over the weekend and talk some more about this problem, but right now I just want to give a few of the not-so obvious reasons every homeowner should take some time to understand moisture and the importance of having not too little, not too much, but keeping it "just right".
Too much can cause: peeling paint, mold and mildew, ants and other bugs.
Too little can cause: cracking woodwork, cracking skin and nasal passages, feeling chilly even though the thermostat is set to a nominal comfort level. More about moisture later.