Venmar Appliance Repair In Vancouver

An HRV pulls warm moist indoor air across a core against cold incoming air. Below freezing, the moisture condensing in the core can freeze, and every unit has a defrost strategy to deal with it - usually a damper that recirculates indoor air periodically. When the damper motor or the defrost thermostat fails, the core ices solid and airflow collapses.

The symptom people describe is a house that feels stuffy in January and fine in June. We test the defrost cycle rather than just thawing the core, because a thawed core with a dead damper is back the same way within a week.

An HRV produces condensate by design and drains it, usually through a small trap to a floor drain. The trap dries out over a summer of low condensate, loses its seal, and then either lets air bypass or blocks with debris. A blocked drain backs condensate into the cabinet and it finds its way out at the seams.

We clear and re-prime the trap and check the slope of the drain line. It is a small job, and it is worth doing before the water has been sitting against a subfloor for a season.

Venmar HRVs are driven by a wall control or dehumidistat on a low-voltage run back to the unit. A control that has failed, or a damaged wire in that run, typically leaves the unit stuck in one mode - often running flat out, which owners notice on the hydro bill before they notice the noise.

We test at the unit and at the control to establish which end has failed, because replacing a wall control that was never the problem is a common and avoidable expense.

Two fans, each on bearings, running continuously for years. A rising whine or a rumble that tracks fan speed is a bearing. An intermittent rattle is more often debris in the housing or a filter that has been refitted out of its track.

We open the cabinet, check both fans and the core, and clean what a decade of continuous running has deposited. On a unit old enough that both fans are on the way out, we give you the number against a replacement unit and let you decide.

On the kitchen hood side Venmar behaves like its Broan siblings, which is good news for parts. A hum with no rotation is the run capacitor. No response at all is the switch or the supply. A grinding that worsens with speed is the blower bearing.

We test the capacitor first because it fails far more often than motors do and costs a fraction as much. More on range hood repair.

We say this with no judgement because it is extremely common: most homeowners do not know the HRV exists, let alone that it has filters. A unit running on filters loaded solid for ten years moves almost no air, works its fans harder than it should, and loads the core with everything the filters should have caught.

Filters, a core clean and a defrost test is the standard service, and on a neglected unit it usually restores it completely without a single part.