air exchange in relatively tight house construction

In industrial applications large sized heat exchangers are used for air makeup units.  I have seen residential HVAC units for warming the intake air prior to dumping into the house by passing the exit air thru a series of metal plates/tubes placed in the path of incoming air.  These residential units are a big box with standard furnace pipe hookups.  Has anyone here used this kind of setup to add fresh air to the basement and exhaust out stale air from upstairs?  Now the real goal of the question, Hey permaculture folks is there an even better way to passively exchange cold fresh air for warm stale air efficiently?  I mean, I could just leave a door open for a bit each day but.......

Hi John, interesting question.
Living in a 100  year old house, this is not a problem for us..
I suspect that in a tight house that has someone home, air would be exchanged simply by walking in and out the door a few times.
How the home is heated would affect that, too.
We heat with a masonry stove; we might light it twice a day.
600 clay bricks at 200+F, will convince you that a partially open window all night at 10F is a nice thing...

Of course, not everyone is able to heat with wood.
In a city, you might not go outside often enough to bring in fresh air.
Opening a window is the most efficient way to quickly add fresh air; no power required.

Active ventilation: An Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV)) is designed to give fresh/stale air exchange, while minimizing the required heating/cooling load because of the air movement. One basic idea is a counter directional air-to-air heat exchanger, which uses the heat in the stale inside air to preheat the incoming cold air (in heating season. Same idea but reversed heat flow in cooling season). There are commercial versions, and I've seen people DIY as well.

Passive and semi-passive: some kind of wind catcher might be able to feed/draw air to/from an ERV to supplement or instead of powered fans. Bathroom and kitchen exhaust fan air could exit through the ERV(s) using their fan motors that would have been running anyway.

We heat with geothermal.  The air is not THAT STALE, but I really like fresh air of summertime when the windows are open. A masonry heater would most likely solve my grumpiness about wasting heated air to get a bit more fresh in. I'm kicking myself for not discovering this option before we built 25+years ago... beefing up the floor joist's to handle the additional weight & retrofitting a chimney is a sizable project.  

thomas rubino wrote:Hi John, interesting question.
Living in a 100  year old house, this is not a problem for us..
I suspect that in a tight house that has someone home, air would be exchanged simply by walking in and out the door a few times.
How the home is heated would affect that, too.
We heat with a masonry stove; we might light it twice a day.
600 clay bricks at 200+F, will convince you that a partially open window all night at 10F is a nice thing...

Of course, not everyone is able to heat with wood.
In a city, you might not go outside often enough to bring in fresh air.
Opening a window is the most efficient way to quickly add fresh air; no power required.