Heat recovery units are one of those upgrades that quietly do two jobs at once: they cut heating costs and improve the air quality inside your home.
How they work
At a basic level, a heat recovery unit extracts warm, stale air from inside the property and uses it to preheat incoming fresh air from outside, before that fresh air is circulated back into the room. Rather than losing all that heat straight out through an extractor fan or open window, the system captures it and puts it to use, meaning your boiler or heater doesn’t have to work as hard to bring the room back up to temperature.
Controlling condensation
Beyond the cost savings, these units play an important role in managing condensation and damp. Poor ventilation is one of the most common causes of condensation building up on walls, windows, and in poorly aired rooms like bathrooms and kitchens. By constantly cycling in fresh, filtered air while retaining the heat, a heat recovery unit helps keep moisture levels down without you having to sacrifice warmth by opening windows.
Scale to suit the property
One of the advantages of these systems is their flexibility. Smaller, single room units are ideal for tackling a specific problem area, such as a bathroom prone to condensation or a home office that needs better airflow. Whole house systems, on the other hand, are ducted throughout the property and manage ventilation and heat recovery for every room at once, making them a good option where damp or poor air quality is a wider issue.
The efficiency numbers
Efficiency varies by unit and installation quality, but some of the better systems on the market boast heat recovery rates of up to 90%. That means the vast majority of the heat that would otherwise be lost through ventilation is instead recovered and reused, which can add up to a meaningful reduction in heating costs over time.
