ERV Installation Without the Runaround.
The ERV is the ventilation answer engineered for climates like ours: it exchanges stale indoor air for fresh outdoor air continuously while recovering both the temperature and the humidity difference between them, so the fresh air arrives pre-conditioned and the July intake tax shrinks to a fraction. For tight Texas construction, it is the gold-standard breathing apparatus.
Installation · Burnet & Central Texas
Balanced Air, Energy Kept
The energy recovery ventilator solves ventilation’s fundamental objection, that fresh air costs conditioning, with an elegant core: outgoing stale air and incoming outdoor air pass through adjacent channels, exchanging heat and, critically for Texas, moisture, without mixing streams. In July, the 100-degree humid intake sheds most of its heat and a meaningful share of its moisture to the outgoing conditioned air before it ever enters your ducts; in January the exchange runs the other way, incoming cold air pre-warmed by the outgoing. The house breathes constantly, balanced, filtered, measured, while recovering the majority of the energy that naive ventilation would pour outdoors.
The moisture-transfer membrane is what makes the ERV specifically right here, its cousin the HRV recovers heat only, the correct choice in cold-dry climates and the wrong default in humid ones, and the distinction is a design decision we get asked to referee regularly: Central Texas homes nearly always want the ERV, because the enthalpy core rejecting incoming humidity in summer is most of the local value. Sizing follows the ventilation standards, occupancy, volume, tightness, ducting strategy ranges from fully dedicated, the premium path, to simplified integrations with existing systems, and controls run from simple schedulers to demand-driven ventilation responding to occupancy and air quality.
Installation is a genuine project day or two: the unit mounted with service access, intake and exhaust terminations placed and screened correctly, ducts run and sealed, condensate handled, controls configured, and the commissioning that matters, both airstreams measured and balanced, because an unbalanced ERV quietly pressurizes or depressurizes the house it was meant to serve.
Local conditions shape this work more than most homeowners expect. Our summers stack week after week of hundred-degree afternoons, which means long compressor runtimes, drain lines moving gallons of condensate a day, and electrical components living near their limits from June through September. Lake humidity keeps the corrosion clock running even in mild months, and spring pollen packs filters fast enough to choke airflow in weeks. A tech who works this exact hundred miles every day builds all of that into the ERV installation call: what to check first, which parts fail early here, and which settings survive a Texas cooling season instead of merely a laboratory one.
Installation
ERV Installation, Done Right
The decisions and disciplines of a balanced ventilation install that delivers its physics.
- ERV versus HRV settled firstThe enthalpy core is the Texas answer nearly always, and the reasoning gets shown rather than assumed.
- Sized to the standardAirflow rates from occupancy and volume math, sized honestly so the core recovers instead of strains.
- Terminations placed with careIntake away from exhausts, driveways, and roof stew; both screened, separated, and weather-protected.
- Ducting strategy chosen honestlyDedicated runs where the budget allows, simplified integration where it must, trade-offs stated plainly.
- Condensate and filters plannedDrainage handled, filter access easy, because the maintainable ERV is the one still working in year ten.
- Balanced at commissioningBoth airstreams measured and matched, the verification that separates balanced ventilation from expensive fans.
Skip the reading, make the call.
Two minutes on the phone with a real tech beats an hour of internet research. Describe the symptom in your own words and get a straight answer about cause, timing, and cost.
Why Off Duty
Who the ERV Serves Best
The natural ERV households: tight new construction, corridor builds of the last decade and the custom lake homes built to modern envelope standards, where designed ventilation is not optional; foam-encapsulated renovations that sealed the old house’s accidental breathing; allergy and air-quality households that want constant filtered dilution rather than window roulette during pollen season; and the energy-conscious, who understand that the ERV is how a house breathes without bleeding. The honest boundary: leaky older construction ventilates itself, badly but adequately, and an ERV there polishes a problem the envelope has not earned yet, which we will say plainly, sometimes recommending air-sealing first so the investment sequence makes sense.
Owners report the ERV difference in livability terms: bedrooms that stay fresh overnight, cooking smells that clear on schedule, the pollen season spent breathing filtered air with windows shut, winter mornings without the condensation weep, and the general absence of that tight-house staleness they had stopped noticing until it left. The machine hums along at whisper duty, filters change on an easy rhythm, and the energy bills show ventilation happening for a fraction of its naive cost. It is infrastructure in the best sense, invisible, constant, and quietly correct.
The process here never changes, whether the job is ERV installation or a full system swap. Step one, you call (512) 925-3090 and a human answers, around the clock. Step two, we test until the real cause is proven, because parts-swapping on a hunch is how invoices grow. Step three, you get the failure, the fix, and the exact number explained to the point before we touch a thing. Step four, we do the work to spec and prove it under load before we leave. Our customers keep writing reviews about exactly this rhythm, which tells us to keep it.
Money talk, handled the Burnet way: we say the price before the work, every time. The trip cost comes over the phone before we roll, the repair quote comes after diagnosis and before a single part goes in, and if the smart move is to not spend money at all, you will hear that too. Fair pricing shows up in every review we have because it is policy, not luck.
A word about waiting it out. Central Texas weather does not leave much grace period, and a system limping in May is a system down in July, when everyone else’s is down too and the schedule is at its tightest. The early call gets the easy appointment and, usually, the smaller invoice. The July call gets the queue. Texas rewards the prepared, and so does our schedule.
You will also know exactly who is in your house. This company runs on one standard because it mostly runs on one set of hands: Bryce, second-generation in the trade, with every credential on the about page and every kind of job photographed in the gallery. Small shop, short chain of accountability, no strangers in rotation.
Coverage is the same as everything else we do: Burnet at the center, about 100 miles in every direction. That means the lake towns, Marble Falls, Kingsland, Horseshoe Bay, the corridor through Leander, Cedar Park, and Georgetown, plus Austin, Bell County, and the outer ring through Waco, San Marcos, New Braunfels, Fredericksburg, and Boerne. The full sixteen-county list lives on the service areas page, and if you sit just past the edge of it, call anyway and get an honest answer.
Diamond Contractor
Mitsubishi’s top ductless credential, earned with factory training.
Second Generation
Raised in the trade, ten years on the tools before the name went on a truck.
Warranty Authorized
JB and Mitsubishi warranty work: we file the claim, you skip the fight.
Open 24 Hours
A real person answers the phone at any hour, every day of the year.
The Standard
How This Work Gets Done Here
A job like this is a chain of small decisions nobody watches: which part, which setting, which clearance, which step gets skipped when the attic hits 130 degrees. Our answer to all of them is the same. Do it the way the book says, the way the second generation was taught, the way you would want it done if the address were your own. That means proven diagnosis before parts, correct materials over convenient ones, and procedure followed all the way through the parts of the job that never show.
It also means finishing properly. The system gets verified under working load, the readings get documented, the old components get shown on request, and you get an explanation in plain English rather than trade jargon. The price never moves between the quote and the invoice. If anything about the work ever needs a second look, the phone number on your receipt rings the person who did it. Simple system, kept promises, reviewed in public by the people it was kept to.
ERV Installation Questions
Asked Before We Roll a Truck
Real questions from real Central Texas customers, answered the same way we answer them on the phone: straight.
ERV or HRV for Central Texas: which one and why?
ERV, almost categorically, and the humidity explains it: the HRV’s core exchanges heat only, correct in cold dry climates where winter moisture recovery is unwanted, while the ERV’s enthalpy core also transfers humidity, which in a Texas July means the muggy intake sheds moisture to the outgoing dry conditioned air before entering your house. That moisture rejection is most of the local value, an HRV here would import humidity all summer that your cooling then pays to remove. The rare local HRV case exists in specific applications, and we will name it honestly if yours is one, but the default answer is the ERV, for reasons your dehumidification budget will appreciate.
Does an ERV replace my need for a dehumidifier?
It reduces the ventilation share of the moisture load, meaningfully, but it does not dehumidify the house: the core rejects a majority of incoming humidity, not all of it, and the house’s internally generated moisture, showers, cooking, occupants, still needs the cooling system or dedicated equipment to remove. Think of the ERV as preventing ventilation from adding to the problem while other equipment subtracts from it. Tight lake-area homes often run both, ERV breathing, dehumidifier wringing, each doing its own physics. The whole-house moisture design considers them together, which is exactly how we quote them.
How much energy does an ERV actually recover?
Quality cores recover a substantial majority of the temperature difference, commonly seventy percent and up in rated conditions, plus a meaningful share of the moisture difference, which in this climate is where the money hides: every grain of July humidity rejected at the core is latent load your air conditioner never sees. Net effect, ventilation at a fraction of its raw cost, with the recovery efficiency documented in the unit’s ratings and realized through correct installation, balanced flows, sealed ducts, maintained cores. We size and commission for the rated recovery and can sketch your expected numbers honestly at the assessment.
Where does the ERV unit get installed?
A conditioned or semi-conditioned mechanical space with service access is the ideal, utility rooms, conditioned attics, well-tempered garages in some designs, because the core and filters need reachable, and the unit prefers not to live in the brutal attic extremes. Terminations need exterior wall or roof access with the intake placed thoughtfully, away from exhaust outlets, garages, and driveways, and duct routing connects it to the house either dedicated or through the existing system per the design. The site walk settles placement in twenty minutes, balancing duct efficiency, service reality, and the house’s architecture, and placement done right is why year-ten maintenance stays easy.
What maintenance does an ERV need?
Friendly, regular, and worth respecting: filters on both airstreams changed on their schedule, quarterly-ish in pollen country, the core inspected and cleaned annually per its type, condensate path verified, and terminations kept clear of debris, wasps, and lint, the outdoor screens collect a surprising census. It folds neatly into the maintenance rhythm, plan customers never think about it, and the failure mode of neglect is undramatic but real: loaded filters strangle the balanced flows, recovery efficiency slides, and the whisper appliance becomes a noisy underperformer. Ten minutes a season keeps the physics honest, and we calendar it from day one.
Related work: HRV Installation · Ventilation System Installation · ERV Services · see real jobs in the gallery
Breathe Balanced, Keep the Energy
The Texas-right ERV, sized, ducted, and balanced to its ratings, with the reasoning shown. Prefer to write it out? Send the form and we call you back.
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