The second ventilation system in your house — the one nobody mentions and almost nobody has cleaned. We do the core, the filters and the connected ducting for $150, added to a furnace and duct cleaning. Read on for why we don’t sell it on its own.
We only clean HRVs alongside a furnace and duct cleaning on the same visit. We do not offer it as a stand-alone service. If you were looking for someone to come out and do just your HRV, we are not that company — and we would rather you knew now than after a phone call. If your furnace and ducts are due anyway, read on: it’s $150 and it is genuinely worth doing together.
If your home was built in roughly the last twenty-five years, walk into the mechanical room and look for a box hanging near the furnace with two insulated ducts running outside. That is your HRV, and there is a good chance nobody has opened it since the day it was installed.
A heat recovery ventilator brings fresh outdoor air in and pushes stale indoor air out — continuously, in the background. The clever part is the core: the two airstreams pass close together without mixing, so the outgoing warm air surrenders most of its heat to the incoming cold air. You get ventilation without simply throwing your heating bill out of the wall.
That matters more in Alberta than almost anywhere. For a good five or six months of the year, opening a window is not a realistic ventilation strategy. Modern homes are also sealed far more tightly than older ones, which is excellent for efficiency and terrible for air exchange. The HRV is what closes that gap — and in a lot of newer homes it is the only thing bringing fresh air in during winter.
An HRV fails by degrees, not all at once. The filters load with dust. The core — a dense block of thin channels, which is exactly the geometry that makes it efficient — gradually packs with fine debris. The intake and exhaust ducting accumulates like any other duct. Sometimes the condensate drain blocks.
Nothing announces any of this. The unit keeps humming, so everyone assumes it is fine. Airflow just falls away over years until the machine is drawing power and making noise while exchanging very little air.
Stuffiness in a house that should feel fresh. Window condensation that lingers all winter. Cooking smells that hang around for hours. Bedrooms that feel close in the morning. People usually blame the windows, the humidity, or the house being “too tight” — when the actual cause is a ventilation system that has quietly stopped ventilating.
Pulled out and cleaned properly. This is the heart of the unit and the single component that most affects whether it is still recovering heat and moving air.
Cleaned or, where they are the washable type, washed. We will show you where they are and how to check them, because that part is a two-minute job you can do yourself between visits.
The connected ducting on both sides, plus the exterior hoods. Intake hoods in particular collect debris, insects and the occasional nest.
Interior grilles cleaned, and we check the condensate drain is clear — a blocked one causes water where you do not want it and is easy to miss.
We clean HRVs; we don’t repair or install them. If we find a failed motor, a cracked core, a drain that needs re-plumbing or a control fault, we’ll show you and say so plainly — then it’s a job for an HVAC contractor.
The honest explanation for why it works this way, since you are entitled to one.
Our crew and equipment are already at your home for the furnace and duct cleaning. Adding the HRV to that visit is genuinely efficient — it is the same trip, the same setup, the same vacuum. That efficiency is the whole reason the number is $150.
A dedicated visit for an HRV alone would carry the full cost of getting a technician and a truck to your house for one relatively small piece of equipment. We would have to charge several hundred dollars for it, and we do not think that represents value, so we do not offer it. Plenty of companies would happily take that booking. We would rather tell you not to.
So: $345 + GST for a single furnace and all its ducting, +$150 for the HRV. If your A/C is due as well, that is +$60 on the same visit, and a dryer vent is +$60.
Mention the HRV on the phone or in the quote form. It means we arrive with the right expectation and the price is settled before we get there — rather than becoming a surprise on the day, which is exactly the thing our flat-rate pricing exists to prevent.
$150 on the same visit. Mention it when you book.
Mention the HRV and we’ll include it in the quote — flat-rate, settled before we arrive.
No obligation. We’ll reply with flat-rate pricing.
Or call us directly at 780-932-7337