Keeping your Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV) unit clean and maintained is a necessity that you should be performing once a year. In particular, your HRV filters need to be cleaned.
We recommend either you do a cleaning in early spring or in preparation for winter. In the video below, we have detailed instructions for you on how to remove the lid of your HRV unit, clean your HRV filters and more:
As the video states, your HRV is essentially an air-to-air exchanger. It ensures that your house is being consistently filled with fresh air by exchanging the old, stale air for fresh air from outside while maintaining the proper humidity levels. Keeping your HRV filters clean is necessary to maintain the ventilation efficiency of your unit.
Allowing your HRV to work efficiently will help keep bills low, but having the filters clean will allow it to operate with more effectiveness. The purpose of an HRV is to increase the indoor air quality of your home, and when the system isn’t cleaned, dirt is transferred into the air that is entering your home.
Over time, your HRV filters can accumulate a lot of dirt and debris from all the air passing through them. The best way to clean them is by sliding them out from their tracks in the unit and washing them in warm, soapy water. Do not use a pressure washer to clean your filters as you will likely damage them and have to buy new ones, when a soapy wash would have done the trick! Make sure to let them dry thoroughly before you place them back into your unit.
Maintaining and cleaning your HRV unit is a quick, easy job that can save you a lot of money and hassle in the future, and ensure that you are comfortable at home with clean, fresh air.

The Weiss-Johnson Blog Team
We are the Weiss-Johnson Blog Team! All blog posts are written by a collective of WJ employees. Each one of our articles is designed to inform our customers of all the happenings in the world of home comfort! Thanks for reading!