Talk title: "Designing a Cold Temperature Heat Pump for Air Quality and Comfort Management"
Ty Newell designs and manufactures cold-climate heat pump ventilation equipment, including the CERV (Conditioning Energy Recovery Ventilator) product line through Build Equinox/Newell Instruments. In this talk from the Westford Symposium, he makes the economic case for better indoor air quality, citing productivity and sick-day research, then walks through how a heat pump works, how refrigerant regulations are shaping upcoming equipment, and why his company designs its own controls rather than relying on off-the-shelf options. He shares over a decade of real field data from CERV-equipped homes performing down to -20°F, explains why recirculating fresh air outperforms single-pass, room-by-room ventilation, and works through case studies including a high-performance house whose ERV struggled with latent (humidity) exchange. He closes with a look at heat pump water heaters for multifamily dehumidification and a caution about how chasing higher SEER ratings can quietly erode a unit's ability to control humidity.