Auto Service Garage Ventilation
Auto Service Garage Ventilation
(OP)
In a large service area (say at a car dealership) 1.5 CFM per square foot is quite a bit of air. In a northern climate a reduction in the heat load could be significant.
If we use a heat exchanger to recover 60% or so of the exhaust heat I think the payback would be less than 10 years vs. just using a gas fired make-up air unit to heat the ventilation air.
However - what if we used a CO sensor to control the ventilation air? In this case I do not think there is any point to paying extra for heat recovery because I think that the ontrol will keep the air flow low enough that the payback would be way too long.
I have no data to back this up. Does anyone have any data or practical advice?
If we use a heat exchanger to recover 60% or so of the exhaust heat I think the payback would be less than 10 years vs. just using a gas fired make-up air unit to heat the ventilation air.
However - what if we used a CO sensor to control the ventilation air? In this case I do not think there is any point to paying extra for heat recovery because I think that the ontrol will keep the air flow low enough that the payback would be way too long.
I have no data to back this up. Does anyone have any data or practical advice?





RE: Auto Service Garage Ventilation
Depending on how many service bays you have (how many large overhead doors) you could also do a calculation to determine a reasonable number to use for natural ventilation. Then augment the natural ventilation number with a 'smaller' HRV.
Also, as far as cost recovery goes, depending on how cold your northern climate is; I'd say that your payback on Heat Recovery would be much less than 10 years. I've worked on a number of similar applications where HR's simple payback was under 5 years.