Recovery in the Whole Building

A building's energy use is an energy balance: gains (people, equipment, sun) minus losses (envelope, ventilation). Recovery attacks the ventilation loss directly.

The Ventilation Load

Ventilation brings in untreated outside air, so it adds both a heating load in winter and a cooling load in summer. Recovery moves that energy back before the coil sees it.

Quantify the Impact

If recovery removes 70 percent of the ventilation load, the coil, plant, and distribution are all sized smaller. That cuts both capital and running cost.

Standards Context

EN 16798 and ASHRAE 90.1 set recovery expectations because this lever is so effective at the whole-building scale.