Airex developed the world’s first smart air brick solution; a novel, patented technology that helps reducing heat demand while maintaining the healthy levels of indoor air quality in homes. 

The Airex innovation was born out the founders’ passion to tackle fuel poverty and climate change, and the realisation that fuel poverty still exists today in one of the most developed parts of the world. This frustration triggered the desire to do something to address the problem. A joint research project conducted with a well-regarded academic researcher, Dr Sofie Pelsmakers, created this opportunity. She identified just how much heat loss is attributed to an overlooked area within buildings: air bricks. 

Airex was able to secure an R&D government grant funding through Innovate UK’s “Energy Game Changer” programme in 2016. This allowed Airex to onboard a fantastic team of engineers and product designers who built the first prototypes to test the hypothesis. These first trials made clear how significant an impact the technology could have and the need to commercialise the product to reach the scale required to have a meaningful impact.  Airex then secured a series of further Innovate UK R&D grant funding that allowed them to further develop their products and becoming ready for commercialisation. 

In 2020 Airex successfully completed the UK’s first ECO Demonstration Action programme, approved by Ofgem. This robust field trial analysed over 6 million datapoints, independently validated Airex’s potential to reduce heat loss by 12% whilst maintaining healthy humidity levels. In 2021 Airex was awarded by BEIS under the “Energy Entrepreneur Award”  - a significant R&D government support that enabled the team to redesign for mass-manufacture to prepare for scaling. In 2021 Airex received significant investment from Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital to support scaling. 

Airex has been approved by the Scottish Government to be rolled out as part of the Warmer Homes Scotland scheme and built strong partnerships with prestigious organisations such as EDF, Octopus Energy, Wates – as well as having been deployed across 15 social housing providers (from Portsmouth to Aberdeen).

Airex won multiple industry awards, including:

• “Business Green Technology Award Cleantech Startup of the Year 2017”;

• “Business Green Technology Award Building Technology of the Year 2018”; 

• “EDF Pulse Award finalists 2018”; 

• “Innovate UK Women in Innovation award 2019”; 

• “Royal Academy of Engineering SME Leaders Award 2020”; 

• “Business Green Leaders Award Energy Efficiency Project of the Year 2021”

• “Product of the Year 2022 @ National Energy Efficiency Awards”

Airex was featured in the Times, Sunday Times, BBC news, BBC One, Fully Charged Show and presented at COP26 – UN Climate Change Conference.

AWENTA is a company with a long tradition and experience. We provide innovative solutions in the field of ventilation of premises. Since 1989, we have been developing our products, trying to meet the needs and requirements of customers.

We offer unique fans and accessories from plastic and metal, which are not only high-end devices, but also decorative elements with which the bathroom, kitchen, office or living room will get an entirely new character.

Ventilation with heat recovery for efficiency

Ventilation units with heat recovery are key in terms of energy savings, as they ensure that the warmth carried by the exhaust air is not wasted, but first transferred to the incoming fresh air without the two air streams ever physically mixing. In extremely hot conditions, heat exchangers can also work in reverse so that the heat carried by the incoming air is transferred to the exhaust air and thus pre-cooled before entering the rooms. These systems should also be equipped with automatically controlled bypasses, thus allowing the incoming air to bypass heat exchange, for example, during the night at times when days are warm and nights are cool.

A Passive House can only function with a highly efficient heat recovery, as ventilation systems without heat recovery waste far more energy per year than a Passive House uses for heat (at the same rate of air exchange, a ventilation unit without heat recovery may lose about 24kWh/(m²yr) whereas a Passive House’s maximum space heating demand is only 15kWh/(m²yr).

The ventilation systems used in Passive Houses must thus have heat recovery efficiencies of at least 75% while the electricity consumption for such systems should not exceed 0.45 Wh/m³ of the transport air volume. Additionally, the acoustic load of the ventilation systems for use in Passive

Houses should not exceed 25dB. Pipes and values should be planned accordingly, making use of silencers.

Ventilation with heat recovery for comfort

A ventilation system with heat recovery ensures that plentiful, nearly room temperature fresh air enters the building in a controlled manner. Draughts are eliminated and residents need not actively air out the rooms. It is important that the fresh air entering the building not exceed 30m³ per hour per person, so as to avoid overly dry air. Such a ventilation system should not be confused with air conditioning systems; humidifying the air within the ventilation system is to be avoided for reasons of hygiene.

The Air-Box Comfort instruction manual is an easy to follow process. These instructions show an outward opening window which is more common in the UK. A video can be seen at www.air-box.co.uk which demonstrates installation in an inward opening window.

There are multiple ways of fitting the Air-Box, depending on the window type (e.g., inward or outward opening windows) so please follow the relevant instructions below, paying special attention to the instructions at the end regarding the application of the labels provided in the ‘sticker kit’ for the purpose of PAS2030: 2019 Quality Assurance visits.