From Benjamin Robinson
Reading Rick Jefferys’s letter on solar heating
(12 February, p 54) raises
the question: whatever happened to heat recovery systems for houses?
In the late 1970s, I visited a new development of timber-frame houses in
Washington, Tyne and Wear, in which heat recovery systems were installed. The
system consisted of a heat exchanger which extracted heat from outgoing air and
used it to heat incoming air. This was supplemented by electric heating. The
houses were also triple-glazed and the roof space, walls and floor were
insulated with 250 millimetre-thick rock wool. They were said to be very cheap
to heat.
Such a system combined with solar heating would be very fuel efficient, so
why has it not been more widely adopted? Perhaps someone could shed some light
on this?
ben.jan@virgin.net
