HRV Installation Without the Runaround.
The HRV recovers heat from exchanged air, and in most of Central Texas the honest first conversation is whether you want its cousin instead: the ERV, which also recovers moisture, usually wins our humid climate. But the HRV has its legitimate local niches, and where one genuinely fits, we install it with the same balanced-ventilation discipline, airflows measured, terminations right, physics delivered.
Installation · Burnet & Central Texas
The Right Tool for Its Specific Jobs
The heat recovery ventilator is the ERV’s heat-only sibling: balanced airstreams exchanging temperature through a sensible core, without the moisture-transfer membrane. In cold dry climates it is the default, recovering winter heat while deliberately exhausting indoor moisture that tight houses accumulate. In humid-summer Texas its heat-only core becomes a liability for general whole-home use, incoming July air keeps its full humidity load, which your cooling then pays to remove, and this is exactly the ERV-versus-HRV fork we referee weekly. Our first honesty on this page: if you arrived here shopping ventilation for a typical Central Texas home, read our ERV page too, because that is usually the recommendation and we will explain why with your own numbers.
The HRV’s genuine local niches deserve their page, though: applications where moisture transfer is unwanted or irrelevant, spaces with high internal moisture generation that benefit from exhausting it, workshop and utility applications where humidity recovery serves nothing, certain commercial and specialty ventilation designs, pool and spa adjacencies engineered with dedicated moisture strategies, and the occasional whole-home case where a specific design condition genuinely argues heat-only. In those fits, the HRV’s simpler core brings its own virtues: robust construction, straightforward maintenance, often friendlier pricing, and frost-hardiness that matters exactly nowhere around here but explains its northern pedigree.
The installation discipline is identical to its cousin’s: sized to the ventilation standards, terminations placed and screened correctly, ducts sealed, condensate handled, controls configured, and both airstreams measured into balance at commissioning, because balanced ventilation that is not balanced is just two fans and a story.
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 HRV 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
HRV Installation Standards
Where the heat-only core genuinely fits, this is the standard its installation gets.
- The ERV question answered firstEvery HRV conversation here starts with the honest fork, and the choice gets justified with climate math.
- Sized to the actual needVentilation rates from the standards, matched to the space’s volume, occupancy, and moisture profile.
- Terminations done properlyIntake and exhaust separated, screened, weather-protected, and placed away from contamination sources.
- Ducting sealed and insulatedBalanced flows respected through the whole path, with condensation managed on the cold-side runs.
- Controls fit to purposeSchedulers, humidistats, or demand controls configured to the application’s actual rhythm.
- Balance verified by measurementBoth airstreams metered and matched at commissioning, documented, the non-negotiable of the category.
Not sure this is your problem?
Call anyway. We name the likely cause on the phone for free, and if it turns out to be something small you can handle yourself, we say exactly that and save you the visit.
Why Off Duty
Honest Refereeing, Then Full Craft
A shop that sells whatever the customer searched for is a catalog with a phone number, and the ERV-HRV fork is where that difference shows: the honest assessment reads your application, whole-home in humid Texas, or one of the genuine heat-only niches, shows the reasoning, and recommends accordingly, even when it redirects the sale to a different product page. When the HRV is right, the install gets the complete balanced-ventilation craft, and when the ERV is right, you will know exactly why before spending anything. Either way the equipment that ends up in your mechanical room matches the physics of your actual situation, which is the entire point of hiring judgment instead of shopping alone.
For the specialty and light-commercial applications where HRVs find their local work, workshops, utility buildings, specific process-ventilation needs, our commercial ventilation experience carries over directly: load-appropriate sizing, duty-rated equipment choices, controls integrated with the building’s systems, and the maintenance schedule set to the environment’s reality, dusty shops eat filters faster than living rooms. The niche cases deserve the same commissioning rigor as any flagship install, and they get it, meters and all.
Every HRV installation call runs the same four steps we run on everything. You call (512) 925-3090 and a real person answers, any hour of any day. We diagnose with gauges and meters, never with guesses, until the actual cause is proven. Then we explain it straight: the failure, the fix, and the exact price, in plain English, before any work starts. Finally we do the work to spec and verify it under load before the truck leaves. Temperatures checked, pressures checked, paperwork handled. It is the same process that earned the reviews on our reviews page, and it does not change based on the size of the job.
On pricing, the policy is the same as everything else here: out loud and up front. The visit cost gets stated on the phone before anyone drives anywhere. The repair price gets stated after diagnosis and before work. No packages with hidden contents, no commission-driven upsell in the truck, and no number on the invoice you did not already hear.
Worth saying plainly: this is not a problem that ages well. Systems compensate quietly right up until they cannot, and the failure that finally announces itself usually costs more than the one caught early would have. If your gut says something is off, that instinct is worth one free phone call. The worst case is we tell you everything sounds normal, which is a pretty good worst case.
As for who shows up: this is an owner-operated shop, so the tech at your door is usually Bryce himself, a second-generation HVAC man with ten years on the tools, licensed, insured, and photographed doing exactly this kind of work in the job gallery. No commissioned salesman rides along, and nobody at this company earns a bonus for talking you into more than you need.
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.
HRV Installation Questions
Asked Before We Roll a Truck
The ones the phone line hears most for this service, with the answers given at full length instead of sales-brochure length.
Should I get an HRV or an ERV in Texas, once and for all?
For whole-home ventilation in Central Texas humidity: the ERV, in nearly every case, because its moisture-transferring core rejects a large share of incoming summer humidity that an HRV would deliver straight into your house for the air conditioner to remove at your expense. The HRV earns its place in the exceptions: high internal-moisture spaces that want humidity exhausted, workshops and utility applications indifferent to moisture recovery, and specific engineered designs. The honest test is your application’s moisture arithmetic, and we run it with you before recommending either. When a shop quotes an HRV for a normal Texas house without that conversation, ask why.
What is the actual difference inside the two units?
The core. Both machines run balanced airstreams past each other for energy exchange; the HRV’s core is a sensible heat exchanger, temperature only, typically robust plate construction, while the ERV’s enthalpy core adds a moisture-permeable membrane transferring humidity along with heat. That single difference cascades into climate fit: heat-only serves cold-dry winters wanting moisture exhausted, enthalpy serves humid summers wanting moisture rejected at the door. Maintenance differs modestly, sensible cores tolerate washing, membrane cores get gentler care, and pricing differs some. The physics choice dwarfs both differences, which is why it leads every conversation here.
Where does an HRV genuinely make sense around here?
The honest local list: workshops, utility buildings, and outbuildings where ventilation is about fumes, dust, and heat rather than humidity budgets; spaces with heavy internal moisture generation whose design goal is exhausting it, certain laundry, utility, and process rooms; some commercial and specialty ventilation designs engineered around dedicated dehumidification; and occasional whole-home edge cases with specific design conditions. Around the lakes we install a handful of legitimate HRV applications a year against many ERVs, which is roughly the honest ratio for this climate, and each one starts with the fork question answered on paper.
Can an HRV help cool my shop or garage?
It ventilates; it does not cool, and the distinction saves disappointment: an HRV exchanges air, recovering heat across its core, which in summer means incoming air arrives near outdoor temperature minus the recovery effect, useful for exhausting heat buildup, fumes, and stale air from a workspace, and no substitute for actual cooling where comfort is the goal. The workshop reality is often a pairing: ventilation handling air changes and fumes, a mini-split handling temperature, each sized to its job. We design shop comfort holistically and will tell you plainly which combination your space and use pattern actually need.
What maintenance does an HRV need?
The friendly rhythm of the category: filters on both airstreams changed seasonally, faster in dusty applications, the core inspected and washed annually, sensible cores tolerate straightforward cleaning, condensate drainage verified before each cooling season, and terminations kept clear of debris and nests. Shop and utility installations earn environment-appropriate schedules, sawdust is a filter’s natural enemy, and controls get verified at the annual visit. Neglect degrades quietly, imbalanced flows, sliding recovery, and ten minutes a season prevents it. Our installs leave with the calendar set and, for plan customers, the whole rhythm handled.
Related work: ERV Installation · Ventilation System Installation · HRV Services · see real jobs in the gallery
The Right Core for the Job
The fork refereed honestly, and whichever machine wins, installed and balanced to its ratings. Prefer to write it out? Send the form and we call you back.
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