SolarAirTech

Been up in Scandinavia visiting family and they had a Solar Ventilator. They are becoming very popular there; it is the new sort of green device up in Northern latitudes. Apparently Solar Ventilation is catching on because of the level of insulation used in producing high levels of energy efficiency in Scandinavian homes.

The typical Danish and Swedish home is very prone to fill up with condensation quite simply because they are so sealed up. No one opens a window in winter as energy is too expensive to let it drift outside into the cold. What I did not get was that solar ventilators are not about only hot air and the heating effect but something much more subtle. As my friend explained the cold in Scandinavia is much more bearable than in Britain because it is a “dry Cold”, the air has no humidity, and it is humidity that saps the heat out of you body.

Well a house is the same, if your house is full of damp and condensation it takes longer to warm up, plus it fills the living space with other environmental changes that are not so good for your health. The Swedes love Solar Ventilation for another reason that's not just the free air flow driven by solar power, but also because it provides a high level of energy input and savings.

Say your solar ventilator provides 100 cubic metres of air every functioning hour at 26 degrees centigrade, that represents useful energy. But what needs to be considered is this: if you put that volume of air through your home on a typical British winters day, but not through a Solar Ventilator the air would be at 5 degrees Centigrade thus making the home colder. So, the Swedes would argue that the TOTAL energy provided is that from the solar ventilator plus the energy not lost by pumping cold external air directly into your home. 

So I can see that Solar Ventilation is pretty clever, particularly when you don't have to heat up all that condensation as well.