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Natural Ventilation: What Is It and When Can You Use It?
Many homeowners incorrectly believe that they have to choose between energy efficiency and indoor air quality when designing their homes. This line of thinking assumes that a completely airtight building envelope that improves thermal performance leads to less healthy indoor air quality. On the flip side, a "leaky" home will push up your heating and cooling bills. However, it can also allow VOCs, allergens, and other indoor air pollutants to "escape" as fresh air infiltrates your home. Though this might have been true several decades ago, mechanical ventilation systems such as ERVs or HRVs allow even the most airtight dwellings to benefit from an influx of fresh air to replace the stale air inside the walls of our home.
Though mechanical ventilation systems offer an energy-efficient strategy to improve indoor air quality for passive homes and other homes focusing on an airtight building envelope, natural ventilation strategies can also provide an opportunity to achieve the same. Below, we explain how you can incorporate natural ventilation strategies in your home. We will also look at some of the advantages and drawbacks of natural ventilation at home.
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Unless you live next to a factory or a busy highway, the chances are that the air outside your home is actually healthier than the inside air that you are breathing. In fact, studies undertaken by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) find that indoor levels of air pollutants may be two to five times, and sometimes upwards of 100 times, higher than outdoor levels. Natural ventilation strategies not only eliminate unwanted odors that accumulated in your stale indoor air but also can get rid of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other indoor air contaminants that might compromise your health.
What Are the Benefits of Natural Ventilation Systems?
According to the US Department of Energy, around 75 percent of all households in the United States have at least one air conditioner in use. Collectively, air conditioners' operation during the warm summer months accounts for around 6 percent of all the electricity produced and consumed in the United States. In dollars and cents, Americans spend over $29 billion on air conditioning each year. Artificial cooling for our homes also had led to the emission of an estimated 117 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year - increasing the scope and effect of climate change.
These statistics should convince us that reducing our dependence on artificial air conditioning is one surefire way to reduce our household carbon footprint. Natural ventilation can help lower our reliance on central air conditioners, especially when combined with other strategies like energy-efficient landscaping and smart thermostats.
Other advantages that come with incorporating natural ventilation strategies in your home include:
- Reduced energy bills: Wind and natural buoyancy are free and are a great way to cut back your summer AC bills.
- Low maintenance: A central AC unit will most likely need yearly maintenance and inspections by professional technicians. In contrast, well-designed natural ventilation strategies are essentially maintenance-free.
- Improved Air Quality: Opening up windows in the springtime is a great way to "flush out" the stale indoor air accumulated over the winter. In the same way, natural ventilation strategies allow the fresh, outdoor air to permeate your home.
- Consistency and Comfort: The best natural ventilation systems also ensure that every room of your home receives fresh, outside air. This planning helps eliminate stale air accumulation in certain areas of your home (such as basements).
- Reduced Carbon Emissions: Natural ventilation strategies can also reduce your household's carbon emissions via less mechanical cooling dependence.
Tobias Roberts
Tobias runs an agroecology farm and a natural building collective in the mountains of El Salvador. He specializes in earthen construction methods and uses permaculture design methods to integrate structures into the sustainability of the landscape.
