Some Questions about HRV and OAK...

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Apr 6, 2018
13
Maine
Hi!
We bought our house last May and are starting to figure things out. It was build in 1988. We are on an island off the coast of Maine called Westport. Bridge connected so not too out-there. It's about 1300 square feet.

The center of the house is a brick chimney with an open fireplace on one side, and a woodstove thimble on the other. We installed an Ideal Steel, and I'm starting to get the hang of it. At first it was heating us out of the place, but now I'm learning to go more low and slow and we're pretty cozy inside.

Behind the stove is a hole in the masonry that has a 4" pipe in it, which leads horizontally through the crawl space under our house and out the back foundation wall. I've ordered the Ideal Steel OAK, and plan to hook this up ASAP.

We also noticed vents in every room, which we eventually discovered lead back to a box in the crawl space with an Aldes label. There is a timer in the bathroom that turns this on. It looks to be quite old, it wouldn't surprise me to find out this dated back to 1988 or the early 90s. It does seem to turn on when we activate the timer. But when we feel the vents you can't really feel air movement. Sometimes you can but it's super light. My understanding is that this is supposed to ventilate the house, but not bring in cold air?

My question is, does anyone know anything about these old Aldes models. When am I supposed to activate the timer? How do they work in relation to the wood stove? I'm just not totally sure what purpose it's supposed to serve.

Thanks!