EcoRenovator - View Single Post

pladijs · 01-24-12, 05:17 PM

I have been following this thread for a while, and got appetite to start on something myself.

I live in a small 60m2 apartment in an old renovated building. Three rooms in a row, livingroom-kitchencombo, and the last room is my bedroom, with a bathroom semi-attached (no door between them). I renovated this apartment myself, not hindered by much background knowledge, and overlooked a major thermal bridge in my tiled bathroom floor, aggravated by the fact that my neighbor downstairs decided not to use that space at all and does not heat it (he has a larger apartment). Result: lots of condensation on the floor, even when it's just chilly outside (say 6C).

Another source of humidity is cooking: it would have been quite difficult to install a true extractor hood given the setup here, so I'm stuck with a recirculating system. You guessed; there's a lot of humidity, cold spots, I can start to smell mold developing. A seriously bad situation.

A simple extractor fan in my bedroom/bathroom would help a lot, but I’d actually like it to run continuously to improve the air quality throughout the entire place. I’ve been planning to install a HRV unit, and given that its purpose would also be to extract humidity, I’m excluding systems with humidity recovery. Given the price-tag of commercial systems, and an uncontrollable desire to mess around with stuff, I was thinking of getting started on my own HRV.

To cut it short: after quite a bit of reading around, remembering what I liked and ignoring good advice, I thought I’d buy a piece of 4mm or 6mm thick double-sided polycarbonate board, and cut out the individual channels with a cutter (resulting in many thin long pieces of hollow plastic). Then, make flimsily thin empty frames out of this, about 90cmX44cm in size, and then stretch aluminium foil over them, make a stack of them, say 40 pieces, and take an approach somewhat like in the “make” article which was posted above. I would use some silent 120mm fans. I’ve taken up soldering, so I’m looking forward make this run slowly, and somewhat faster when the relative humidity increases.

Questions I have are: does this make any sense whatsoever? Would the fans be able to push the air through (tell me there’s not enough information here to know). Any idea on this surely being so inefficient it cannot be worth it? A specific question I have is: would it make sense to force the flow between the plates to follow an S pattern, using baffles somewhat like in a shell-and-tube heat exchanger. Would such baffles just decrease the capacity? Would they help creating a turbulent flow? In that respect: would it help to try creating a more rugged surface of aluminium?

Lots of questions, not too much structure, long post. Really sorry about that, but any comment is greatly appreciated!

01-24-12, 05:17 PM	#204
pladijs Lurking Renovator Join Date: Jan 2012 Location: belgium Posts: 13 Thanks: 2 Thanked 2 Times in 2 Posts	small plate heat exchanger with aluminium foil I have been following this thread for a while, and got appetite to start on something myself. I live in a small 60m2 apartment in an old renovated building. Three rooms in a row, livingroom-kitchencombo, and the last room is my bedroom, with a bathroom semi-attached (no door between them). I renovated this apartment myself, not hindered by much background knowledge, and overlooked a major thermal bridge in my tiled bathroom floor, aggravated by the fact that my neighbor downstairs decided not to use that space at all and does not heat it (he has a larger apartment). Result: lots of condensation on the floor, even when it's just chilly outside (say 6C). Another source of humidity is cooking: it would have been quite difficult to install a true extractor hood given the setup here, so I'm stuck with a recirculating system. You guessed; there's a lot of humidity, cold spots, I can start to smell mold developing. A seriously bad situation. A simple extractor fan in my bedroom/bathroom would help a lot, but I’d actually like it to run continuously to improve the air quality throughout the entire place. I’ve been planning to install a HRV unit, and given that its purpose would also be to extract humidity, I’m excluding systems with humidity recovery. Given the price-tag of commercial systems, and an uncontrollable desire to mess around with stuff, I was thinking of getting started on my own HRV. To cut it short: after quite a bit of reading around, remembering what I liked and ignoring good advice, I thought I’d buy a piece of 4mm or 6mm thick double-sided polycarbonate board, and cut out the individual channels with a cutter (resulting in many thin long pieces of hollow plastic). Then, make flimsily thin empty frames out of this, about 90cmX44cm in size, and then stretch aluminium foil over them, make a stack of them, say 40 pieces, and take an approach somewhat like in the “make” article which was posted above. I would use some silent 120mm fans. I’ve taken up soldering, so I’m looking forward make this run slowly, and somewhat faster when the relative humidity increases. Questions I have are: does this make any sense whatsoever? Would the fans be able to push the air through (tell me there’s not enough information here to know). Any idea on this surely being so inefficient it cannot be worth it? A specific question I have is: would it make sense to force the flow between the plates to follow an S pattern, using baffles somewhat like in a shell-and-tube heat exchanger. Would such baffles just decrease the capacity? Would they help creating a turbulent flow? In that respect: would it help to try creating a more rugged surface of aluminium? Lots of questions, not too much structure, long post. Really sorry about that, but any comment is greatly appreciated!