Mount Pleasant, a seven-home development in West Horsley, Surrey has carefully been planned and designed to create and maximise the right balance between people and their environments.
By making major reduction in the emissions created by homes and installing high insulation levels, energy efficient appliances and lighting, recycling heated air and harnessing free energy from the sun, Mount Pleasant is the ultimate environmentally friendly house and was recently awarded Joint Winner of the “Environmental Sustainability category by Guildford Borough Council Heritage & Environment Awards 2005”. Its design is based on traditional architectural styles and built using a range of traditional materials such as timber window frames and copper guttering. It has also been built to protect the environment by using renewable materials, harnessing natural power and minimising harmful emissions.
The homes benefit from a range of low energy features which complement the overall energy efficiency of the development. Vent-Axia has supplied and installed seven ultimate energy efficient ‘Air Minders’. The Vent-Axia Air Minder is the next generation of whole-house heat-recovery ventilation systems, which is being warmly welcomed by environmentalists, government departments and builders committed to fulfilling the objectives of Building Regulations Document L. Every house at Mount Pleasant is equipped with an Air Minder system which has the potential to reduce its total energy demand by as much as 40%.
Christopher Brown, Managing Director of Life Properties who is developing Mount Pleasant comments, “The Vent-Axia Air Minder offers second to none thermal efficiency. We chose this system because of its reliability, ease of installation and maintenance”.
Rising warm air heats the filtered fresh air that flows into each room and by continually removing stale air maintains high air quality at all times. The Air Minder systems herald a real advance in environmental health, at a time when poor air quality is now seen as a key factor in the accelerating incidence of respiratory illness.
The commitment to energy saving is apparent throughout the Air Minder range. The super-efficient heat exchangers recover an average 90% of the winter warmth that would otherwise be wasted by conventional extract ventilation, whilst the use of energy saving LoWatt DC motors, pioneered by Vent-Axia, cuts electrical power consumption by up to 80%.
At the practical level, specifiers and installation contractors will like the neat dimensions and light weight of the Air Minder units – they are easily lifted through a typical loft access hatch, ready for fitting at any desired angle. Robust mounting feet with keyhole slots make for easy fixing and the specially angled rotatable spigot heads make quick work of attaching the flexible ductwork connections. Maintenance access to the integral slide-in, slide-out filters is as easy as it gets, so will be no more arduous than changing the filter pads in a domestic vacuum cleaner.
The Air Minder has seven models offering a choice of additional features such as variable speed control, anti-vibration mounting feet, auto-defrosting, summer by-pass ventilation, filter cleaning and service indication, automatic run-time logging and fully-programmable operation.
The Vent-Axia Air Minder is the next generation of whole-house heat-recovery ventilation systems – a step-change advance on current domestic equipment, thanks to the imaginative application of advanced design and manufacturing technology. The Air Minder range will suit all applications and desired levels of control - simultaneously saving energy and contributing directly to both individuals’ better health and the environment.