The FPL bill says the new house is sealed tight. The bedroom at 6 a.m. says too tight.

Start with the bill

Picture two FPL customers in Palatka, same month. One lives in a 1972 block house on the US 17 corridor and pays a lot for cooling because the house leaks air at every window frame and duct joint. The other lives in a house built in the last ten years on the outskirts of town, pays far less, and cannot figure out why the bedrooms smell like a closed suitcase every morning.

The second bill is the compliment and the complaint at once. Houses built to current code are sealed and insulated well enough that they do not exchange air with the outdoors the way older ones do. That is why the bill is low. It is also why the carbon dioxide, moisture and odors from four people sleeping in a closed house have nowhere to go. The fix is to bring in fresh air on purpose, in a controlled amount, without bringing in the heat and humidity that sit outside a Palatka house from June to September.

New construction against retrofit

In a new build, ventilation is designed in: a ventilator sized to the house, ducted to the return or to the bedrooms, with its own intake and exhaust. Palatka does not see much new construction, so most of our ventilation work is a retrofit into a house built in the last fifteen or twenty years that was sealed well and ventilated by accident.

A retrofit means finding attic or closet space for the ventilator, running two insulated ducts to an exterior wall, and connecting the unit to the existing duct system, usually at the return. On a tight house with a single-story layout and an accessible attic, that is a one-day job.

Ductwork realities in older Palatka houses

The old houses are a different story, and worth stating plainly. A 1900s frame house in the North Historic District or a 1960s block house in Newtown does not need mechanical ventilation. It gets more fresh air through its envelope than any ventilator would supply, and the air quality problems it has come from the quality of that air: oak and pine pollen in spring, the fine dust from the mill and the fields, and the ground moisture that comes up through a crawlspace. Spending on a ventilator there buys nothing. Filtration and a dehumidifier are the right tools, and we will say so at the estimate.

The exception is an old house that has been tightly renovated: new windows, spray-foam attic, sealed ducts. That house behaves like a new one and may need what a new one needs.

Ask whether your house needs ventilation

Sizing for a humid inland climate

An energy-recovery ventilator is the right type for Putnam County, because it transfers both heat and moisture between the outgoing and incoming air streams. In a climate with a 76-degree summer dew point, a ventilator that handled heat only would bring in a steady stream of moisture that the air conditioner then has to remove. Sizing follows the house’s floor area and bedroom count under the standard ventilation calculation, and we size to the low side of the range: enough fresh air to clear the morning staleness, not so much that the dehumidifier works overtime in August. Controls run the unit on a schedule or on a carbon-dioxide sensor rather than continuously.

Cook’s installs Lennox Healthy Climate ventilation equipment from the Palm Coast headquarters and services every brand. Free estimates on new equipment.