Combining passive ventilation, heat recovery and system intelligence to deliver 100% fresh air and comfortable temperatures.
Combining passive ventilation, heat recovery and system intelligence to deliver 100% fresh air and comfortable temperatures
A natural way to ventilate your building, reducing heat loss without the need for fans. Integrating passive ventilation with heat recovery (PVHR™) and system intelligence, Windhive supplies up to 200l of tempered fresh air every second. It adapts to real-time conditions to deliver an optimal balance of ventilation and comfortable temperatures, whatever the weather.
Ideally suited to Schools and Commercial Buildings, Windhive can also be specified to energy-efficient homes
100% fresh air
Windhive® is a pure natural ventilation system, meaning it only supplies fresh air into rooms. It does not recirculate stale, contaminated air as some systems do, instead it keeps the flow paths separate, ensuring the highest quality of indoor air.
Heat recovery
Windhive® offers heat recovery of up to 72% efficiency to regulate room temperatures at near-zero energy cost. Each unit is designed to save 1,600kWh per year on average and significantly reduces both energy bills and cold draughts during the winter.
Silent operation
Windhive® has no noisy fans or motors, giving occupants the silence and fresh air required for full concentration – especially important in schools. Testing has shown it reduces external noise by an average of 45%
Connected
Once installed, Windhive® connects automatically to the Ventive cloud to enable remote commissioning, real-time performance monitoring and proactive maintenance. Free for the first year, connection is made via GSM to ensure security, simplicity and savings as well as allowing over-the-air upgrades to optimize performance.
Free cooling
Windhive adapts to the external environment automatically, delivering optimal comfort. It has the intelligence to purge heat from a building for free overnight, when outdoor temperatures are lower than indoor. This free cooling can greatly reduce the cumulative risks of overheating during the summer.
Seamless design
We design and manufacture each Windhive® to be perfect for your project. Matching roof profiles or colour-coding to building aesthetics, our design team can assist at the design stage, which can often make the difference between a good project and exceptional one. We can also offer IES modelling to give comfort on performance.
How does Ventive Windhive work?
Passive Ventilation with Heat Recovery (PVHR™) is a patented method of delivering high thermal efficiency and consistent air flow using natural ventilation, by securely transferring the heat from exhaust air to fresh incoming air. Windhive represents the 3rd generation of PVHR design, offering a 35% uplift in performance due to its fully integrated design and complete Environmental Management System.
Windhive® has a number of sensors that constantly monitor the temperature and air quality within the room. The sensors communicate with the system’s actuators to adapt performance to changing conditions in real time. You can set custom parameters based on your own requirements, and later tweak them based on real life performance data, via over-the-air upgrades. Windhive is capable of the following operational modes:
Full heat recovery
Windhive® supplies 100% fresh air to the room and allows stale air to exhaust to the outside, recovering heat between the two air pathways. This is pure natural ventilation that ensures there are no cold draughts – reducing heat loss by up to 72%. In winter, once CO2 concentration has returned to base levels, the dampers close to ensure heat is retained overnight.
Bypass mode
Windhive® dynamically adjusts to sensor data from the classroom to provide a healthy balance of air quality and energy efficiency. This can change multiple times during the day as occupancy levels vary. Bypass mode routes exhaust air around the heat exchanger, reducing the amount of heat recovered while it accelerates airflow to maintain optimum air quality.
Passive cooling
During warm conditions Windhive® can enable secure night-time purging. This mode supplies fresh air through a wall louvre, as Windhive opens all three air pathways, accelerating the rate of extract and drawing warm air out of the room. Capable of 4 air changes per hour, this method can reduce temperatures overnight by up to 10°c – for free.
Specifications Performance
Heat Recovery: 0W, up to 72% heat recovery efficiency
Night time cooling: 0W
BREEAM credits: Up to 6 (Hea02, Ene01, Ene04)
Design & installation
From initial planning drawings to full installation design, we provide dedicated support for your project, complete with on-site commissioning. Contact us today with details of your project and we can provide thermal performance modelling, IES reports and advice on how the right ventilation strategy can help your design goals. At Ventive we model, specify and manufacture each system to suit your project’s specific requirement. All our systems are fully monitored following commissioning so we can remotely update the performance parameters of your building to suit changing requirements.
Windhive® can be integrated with ease into any roof type with no need for unsightly upstands or internal boxing. Two styles are available – smooth (rounded) and sharp (squared).