If you want the comparison flat on the table instead of buried in prose, this is the page. Read the first table for the difference, the second for what your kind of Stillwater house usually needs, and the tiebreakers if you land in the middle.
| Attribute | HRV — heat recovery | ERV — energy recovery |
|---|---|---|
| What the core transfers | Heat only. Water vapor leaves the building with the exhaust stream. | Heat plus a share of moisture. Some of the humidity in the outgoing air is handed back to the incoming air. |
| Effect on winter indoor humidity | Lowers it. That is the point when a sealed house is generating more moisture than it can shed. | Preserves it. Air still turns over, but you do not throw away as much of the humidity you have. |
| Summer behavior | Brings outdoor moisture straight in with the ventilation air on humid days. | Limits how much outdoor humidity rides in. It does not dehumidify — your cooling system still does that work. |
| Condensate | Produces condensate in cold weather; needs a trapped drain or a pump. | Typically produces little or none in winter, which simplifies the mechanical room. |
| Best-fit house | Full households, multiple daily showers, finished lower levels, older shells recently sealed, standing water indoors. | Tightly built or deeply remodeled homes, low occupancy, heavy wood-burning or fireplace use, anyone losing a humidifier battle. |
| Wrong-fit warning sign | House already reads under twenty-five percent relative humidity in January and everyone has cracked knuckles. | Glass beads or ices on cold mornings and the bathroom mirror will not clear. |
| Maintenance rhythm | Rinse or vacuum the core and change filters on a seasonal cadence; keep the condensate trap clear. | Same filter cadence; the core is cleaned per manufacturer guidance and there is no drain to watch. |
| What it will not do | It is not a dehumidifier, an air conditioner, or a substitute for a working bath fan. | It is not a humidifier. It slows moisture loss; it does not add water to your house. |
A river town that milled lumber before Minnesota was a state has an unusually wide range of housing, from bluff-top Victorians to conversions in the valley to neo-traditional developments on the west side. The table below is where each of them usually lands.
| House type | Typical construction | Usual core | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1870s–1910s hill Victorians and Italianates | Balloon-framed, plaster, stone foundations, storm windows, steep lots. | Heat recovery | These shells get sealed in layers over decades — new storms, attic insulation, a rebuilt porch — and the first winter after any of it is when glass starts weeping. Routing uses vertical chases the original framing left behind. |
| Downtown valley infill and building conversions | Masonry party walls, limited exterior access, association rules. | Depends on routing | Core follows the humidity reading, but the feasible duct route and the approved hood location decide the scope and sometimes the model. Scope first, core second. |
| Seventies planned-neighborhood ramblers and splits | West-side buildout, tuck-under mechanicals, open basement ceilings. | Heat recovery | Middling-tight houses with stratification between levels. Two exhaust pickups, one per level, and short runs to a rim-joist termination. |
| Eighties and nineties two-stories | House wrap, bigger volumes, open stairwells, some with a passive fresh-air duct on the return. | Heat recovery, usually | Moisture generated downstairs lands on upper-level glass. If a remodel left the house arid instead, flip to energy recovery — the symptom outranks the decade. |
| Nineties–2000s neo-traditional developments | Tighter framing, alley-loaded garages, code-era ventilation already installed. | Re-decide at replacement | Most of these already have a unit approaching end of life. Do not copy the builder's choice by reflex; pick from how the house behaves now. |
| Post-2015 tested infill and rebuilds | Low infiltration, continuous exterior insulation on some, ventilation load-bearing from day one. | Energy recovery | Dryness complaints dominate. Size to bedroom count and floor area, commission with measured airflow, and expect the unit to run continuously on low. |
Found your row? Turn it into a scoped install quote.
Request my recommendationFor the majority of Stillwater houses — hill-district historic stock that has been sealed incrementally, seventies ramblers and splits on the west side, and family-occupied two-stories — install a correctly sized heat-recovery ventilator with exhaust pickups on the levels that make moisture, and put the condensate on a trapped drain. Choose an energy-recovery ventilator when the house is genuinely tight and genuinely dry: post-2015 construction, a gut remodel with new windows and a foamed rim, low occupancy, or heavy fireplace use. In the valley and in building conversions, resolve the duct route and the approved hood location first, because those constrain the model more than the core preference does. Either way the installation is balanced, measured, and quoted as one flat installed number — Furnace Direct does not sell the equipment separately.
The physics do; the logistics change. Shared walls, a masonry shell, and limited exterior access mean the routing conversation comes before the core conversation, and building association approval usually gates where a hood can land. We scope those before quoting rather than after.
We want an accessible elevation that is not pinned against a retaining wall or hanging over a steep drop, because you will need to reach the screens twice a year. On terraced lots that often means the street side or a gable end rather than the river-facing wall.
It moves you toward heat recovery, and it adds a dedicated exhaust pickup in that room to the scope. Standing water indoors is a continuous moisture source, and it overwhelms a system sized only for occupancy.
Neither core type is inherently quieter. Perceived noise comes from unit mounting, the first elbow off the cabinet, duct sizing, and where the supply grille lands relative to a bedroom. We design those before choosing a model, which is why the noise question gets answered by the installation, not the spec sheet.
Tell us the house type and the tiebreaker answers. We reply with the core, the duct route we would use, and a flat Stillwater install price.
The hub holds the statewide explainer; the city pages each take a different run at the choice.