Centralised vs DecentralisedCentralised vs Decentralised Ventilation
Ventilation comes in one of two broad categories, centralised or decentralised. Whether designing your perfect climate from scratch or upgrading your existing with a renovation or retrofit, it helps to determine whether you need a centralised or decentralised unit.
Your space will determine which ventilation system you need; centralised — whole site control, with room for ducting; decentralised — existing dwellings, no room for ducting, simple installation.
Centralised Ventilation
Centralised ventilation systems excel at whole house or site ventilation. Reaching out from one centralized unit, a series of ducting ‘arms’ in octopus like arrangement, supply and extract air from all rooms and spaces. Units are either wall or ceiling mounted and connect to your various spaces via ducts and ventilation grilles. These ‘arms’ need to be in tip-top shape to preserve energy consumption in the system, one leaking duct can make the whole system inefficient.
Centralised units generally have more features, more overall heat recovery and a stronger ventilation capability. Those octopi arms of ducting usually mean these systems can be difficult or impossible to retrofit and are usually allowed for in a build. Ducting space should be considered when deciding if whole house centralised ventilation is for you and your renovation.
Decentralised Ventilation
Decentralised ventilation consists of multiple smaller ventilation units — installed in pairs. These units are paired up because one unit will extract the dirty or stale air while the other will be tasked with supplying fresh air. The two units tango this task, dancing for about 30 seconds one way then they swap exchanging functions. Often these units are part of a larger dance consisting of heating and/or cooling units also operating in the same space. Co-ordination of this ensemble is controlled with a single controller to make the arrangement user friendly and efficient.
Decentralised ventilation is perfect for renovation or retrofit as there’s no need to run the octopus entanglement of ducting and can be installed through the wall or ceiling cavity. This aspect makes decentralised ventilation an excellent solution to solve immediate room-specific problems such as mould or condensation issues in a bathroom or kitchen. Decentralised units can be easily fitted without any real structural modifications — a simple hole in the wall install — solving immediate climate issues.
