How Heat Recovery Systems Work (and Can Your Building Benefit?)

Traditional heating systems in expansive commercial buildings consistently struggle. The heat levels are inconsistent with radiators spaced too far apart to be useful. Also, the air often becomes a little uncomfortable when the daytime shift arrives, and the occupancy level increases with more employees milling about than with the night shift.

It quickly becomes an ongoing battle to manage the heat levels, the need for adequate ventilation, and more. Heat recovery systems are one possible option to work around some of these difficulties in the typical commercial building.

How do they work, and will they provide a discernible benefit? Let’s find out.

Heating Systems are Inherently Inefficient

Heating systems supply warmth and distribute it in a building. When using radiators, they literally radiate the heat outward across the space. Yet, the farther the person is from the heat source, the less they’ll benefit from it. It’s also worth noting that it’s not always possible to add radiators to every part of a facility due to various safety concerns.

Traditionally, there are ventilation issues too. So, air must be removed from the building and new air brought inside to refresh the air supply. Given that some premises are situated within industrialized locations, the local outdoor air quality is not likely to be fantastic. As a result, the air is stuffier than it should be, warmth is inconsistent throughout the premises, and re-heating the premises is costly.

Heat Recovery is a Better Solution

While heaters warm up the air, heat rises, so it quickly finds its way to the ceiling or roofing structure in commercial buildings. Some of these structures are extremely tall, and so they can get draughty. Heat recovery uses the reality that warm air rises to find a solution to get around it.

The idea is that warmth can be captured after it has risen beyond where building occupants can benefit from it. Before it escapes through the roof and is lost forever, heat recovery units capture the warmth for reuse. The stale air is then expelled from the building.

The heat is later added to new air to warm it up. Then the ducting system is utilized to distribute the warm air around the premises again. Doing so saves on re-heating expansive commercial environments repeatedly that becomes prohibitively expensive. To see the heat recovery hubs that do the work, more information can be found here.

Improved Ventilation Through Innovation

The same air is not continually circulated throughout business premises using heat recovery systems. That would mean skipping a few steps.

The innovative systems include expelling the used air from the premises after it has been stripped of warmth. Then, outside air is collected and used to provide better internal air quality. It also goes through a filtration process to remove air contaminants before any collected warmth is added. Therefore, cleaner air is cycled through regularly to avoid buildings suffering from poor air quality. That applies whether it’s cold outside or the temperature is picking up nicely in the summer months.

For heating bills, companies find them extremely costly. As described above, heating is usually a wasteful process by design. However, with heat recovery, heating is instantly made more efficient, requiring less energy to generate the necessary warmth required for commercial spaces. Similarly, cooling and indoor air quality benefit from the installation of commercial heat recovery systems too.