Yes, if we lived in the deep south as we did 50 years ago, then Nicks
ideas would help a great deal

My parents did not have air conditioning in any of their houses in North
Carolina until the last 15 years of their life. The last house had a
whole house fan to draw cooler night air in, and that was a BIG
improvement over anything that we had lived in before. Yes, we shut the
house up TIGHT before 8:00am Summers were miserable with temps reaching
the upper 90s, we sweated in bed almost all night every night until we
moved into the house with the whole house attic fan. Even there, I
adopted the room in the basement as it was cooler than any other room
(one wall was earth, windwos HEAVILY shaded by trees)

But we don't live that way any more so application of Nick's ideas will
have to be confined to areas outside the Humid-SemiTropical zone.

Did he ever build and test the home brew waste water heat exchanger? He
talked like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it ignored
patents held by the GFX inventor, and the numerous very successful
installs of the GFX unit.

Frugality is great, but it can be carried to extremes!!!!

I suggested that Nicks system should world like the AprilAire 8126, and
he suggested that I tell him how it works. Well Nick, do some research
fro yourself and find out what it does.

A simple summary is that it senses RH and temperature inside and outside
the home. It interfaces to the fan in the HVAC controller. The 8126
controller interfaces to an actuator installed in a duct leading to the
outside of the house, said duct connected to the return air plenum of
the HVAC. The amount of time that the fan runs is user selectable.
When the damper is open and the fan is running, outside air is pulled
into the HVAC and distributed throughout the house. The damper will
not open if the outside air temp is above 100F, and it will not open
when the outside air is below 0F. The damper will not open if RH inside
climbs above 55%.

It is designed to allow entry of fresh air into modern homes that are
built MUCH tighter against air infiltration than houses of even 15 years
ago. All to easy for bad smells to accumulate in these new houses
(cooking odors, diaper odors, smoking, body oder, molds, cleaning
fluids, outgassing from new construction materials......)

It does so on a controlled basis, not letting RH rise too high.

Nick lives in Pennsylvania and clearly has no idea what life is like in
the Deep South. Heck we see stories nearly every year about people dying
in New York City and the other big cities of the NorthEast when the high
temps climb to the mid to upper 80s for days at a time. The Deep South
endure MONTHS of this kind of weather and not a peep in the press about it.


Today in Villnova PA it is 72 degrees, winds are from the NE at 4mph.
Humidity is running at 59% A bit on the high side for humidity, but
wow what a nice temperature.

Where I sit right now, the temp is 93F, there is NO wind, and humidity
is lower than normal at 49%
Everyone that can is inside an air condtioned space. From now thru
Spetember, nearly every day here will be a repeat of this but generally
with higher relative humidity (closer to 55-65% is more typical although
we see days at a stretch with 90+F and 90+RH even in the afternoon).

Nick's system appears to mimic the behavior of the AprilAir without the
limit controls installed. It is unclear from my memory of his theory
just how he was going to bring the air into the house, simply open a
duct and let it flow naturally, or hook it into the inlet side of the
HVAC and run the fan. As at least one other poster has pointed out
such systems have limited application as the actuator MUST be protected
from icing conditions, and in cold, cold areas, they simply get taped
shut as they introduce too much cold air (drafts are induced)

In my area the question is whether the benefit of introducing fresh air
outweighs the additional load on the HVAC?????????

On Thu, 08 Jun 2006 18:49:17 GMT, Robert Gammon
wrote:

:Frugality is great, but it can be carried to extremes!!!

Exactly. "A penny saved is a penny earned," said Ben Franklin, but you
don't want to take it to the point where it becomes a curse.