PRESSURE-SENSING Make Up Air for Homes? (AND WHY IT'S COMPLICATED)- Airscape MUA System 

More more more! Love this content. We need a device like this that can work up to 2000cfm and be infinitely variable and can average the pressure from outside to inside to run the fan to stay on average at 0 pascals or the ability to stay slightly pressurized.

I can see adding a wood-burning high efficiency firebox in case the power goes off. However, I would run make up air directly from the outside to the firebox intake so it is a closed system that doesn’t affect the house. Unless the front doors open when you add wood or are starting the fire.

DIY solution, use pressure sensor with Arduino microcontroller, send a PWM signal to an AC Infinity variable speed (EC motor) blower fan. Currently controlling their Cloud Line A6 model fan in this way. The fan speed can be adjusted to perfectly match the desired pressure.

We need an airtight fireplace solution, that works togther with the erv system. I like the idea of having an air-tight glass doors for a wood burning fireplace, and then open the doors whenever you want to use it.

Thank you. Good video. Unintended consequences. There are all kinds of reasons for constructing an airtight house, and you have opened the door to thinking carefully about all of the unintended consequences of every improvement.

Thanks for sharing.

I would love to hear you talk about how to integrate wood burning stoves into a high performance house; not just discount them. I want to incorporate them in my plan for reduced reliance on external infrastructure. How would you do that? Introduce external air intake into the combustion chamber? Thanks!

Great video, and great timing! I just retained an architect. We’re going to have either a wood stove or fireplace insert in my home… Is the move to add a manual switch to the Fantech, some kind of direct vent into the firebox, or just crack a window on the days when my wife wants a fire? All observations and opinions are welcome!

So, I'm curious to know if there is a way to allow you to operate an open fireplace some of the year (if maybe the electricity goes out and it's really cold outside, like we had in Texas a couple of years ago), and at other times you could seal up that fireplace well enough that it wouldn't leak air. Are there systems that can seal a wood burning fireplace that well?

Could the fireplace issue be mitigated with an electric mechanical dampener at the top of the chimney?

I would also like to add a large wood fired brick oven. This would have a dedicated exhaust to the outside, but obviously would require some make up air. I was idly thinking of adding a heat sensor to the chimney to turn on the make up air. Chuckle.

The house you found where the house back-drafted at 2 Pa was probably tight. For a renovated house with an existing fireplace, now at 2 or 3 ACH50 would this, or some other system work? The builder or owner isn't going to want to take out a fireplace. I have read it isn't legal to have air-tight glass doors. Which I learned when I unsuccessfully tried to find air-tight glass doors.

What about sealed wood stoves with outside combustion air vents? Are they OK to use in a very tight home?

Out of curiosity, why can't an ERV/HRV be used for makeup air? Do they just not flow enough, and if that's the case, why aren't manufacturers making them large enough to do that? Or is it just a problem of someone not specifying the proper size unit to allow for makeup air? On a side note, while I'm not sure about fire places, there are plenty of wood stoves that will pipe in outside air directly into the fire box so that they don't pull air from the house. The doors on the stove can be made to seal tighter that way too, which means less chance of smoke or carbon monoxide in the house. Also, the cooler, denser outside air will have more oxygen and will thus be theoretically less likely to have incomplete combustion, and is similar to how some high efficiency furnaces work. If you have a client in the future that insists on a woodburning fireplace, maybe try and convince them to get one of these woodstoves instead. They can also be configured with glass doors if they insist on being able to see the flames.

My wife and I are purchasing a 1962 construction split level. There is a fireplace in the mostly finished basement, a fireplace on the main floor that has a wood burning insert (it smoked too much), and in the basement a non-condensing gas furnace that draws combustion air from the basement. Would a make up air unit make sense for this house?

1986 house, deep retrofit with ccSPF for ACH50 of 1.25. Fireplace is no longer functional - have stopped using.

What kind of instrument you used to measure 2 or 3 Pa?

Is there a sealed wood stove option that has a glass front that also has a air source designed in to pull air from outside for combustion, hopefully leaving air in home unaffected?

Does that assume you have no outside air coming in through an erv or similar or is it just for a momentary event just as running the kitchen exhaust where the erv can't keep up?

Regarding the comment at ~5m07s into the video about needing a hard wired connection to the home network, almost every WiFi AP device these days (including ~$25 ones from Walmart) has a "client" mode where it connects to your home's wireless network and any physical ports on the WiFi AP can then be used to connect any wire-only devices. This can essentially turn a wire-only device into a wireless-enabled one, as long as you have power for the AP, and can save you from having to run Ethernet to odd places around the house.

Why not just exhaust all the air trough the erv? If you would use filters of course. Or run the erv with a unbalance so more on the intake side.

Please qualify your comments about fireplaces to provide the disclaimer to the blanket statements of "do not put a fireplace in an airtight house " to include that "this only applies to open faced fireplaces". Close fireplaces with outside makeup air are not effected by the tightness of the house because they draw air from the outside though their makeup air vents. Close face fireplaces are becoming the norm in today's homes.