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Comment by sparker72678 | Hacker News Reader

The outdoor fresh air intakes are typically via ERVs (Energy recovery ventilation systems). These systems bring in fresh air, filter it, and typically run it through a heat exchanger to minimize energy losses as the fresh air comes and and the stale air goes out.

The purpose is to prevent buildup of harmful gasses and VOCs (everything from CO2 to CO to regular out-gassing of furnitures, etc) that can become dangerous if not cycled regularly.

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2020: ”Poisonous stuff in our houses... Bad! Let's vent it to the environment!”

2120: The environment is all full of poisonous gasses from the people of 2020. Each house needs its own air purifier to make the outdoor air safe to breathe.

Luckily most organic compounds you find in indoor air aren't very stable.

> 2120: The environment is all full of poisonous gasses from the people of 2020. Each house needs its own air purifier to make the outdoor air safe to breathe.

That's the case in much of the world already... I live in area where there's tons of smog in the colder months and consider installing a system for bringing in filtered air from the outside, so that I won't have to open windows for the 6+ months smog period.

This is already a reality.

> the first Cordis hotel on mainland China boasts something that is genuinely rare in big Chinese cities: clean indoor air.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/27/china-clean-a...

It's been my experience that the newer high efficiency buildings seem to be optimising for that rather aggressively to the detriment of breathable air, because the air in them certainly feels a lot stuffier than in the older ones I've been in. I can certainly see building owners setting the recirculation as high as they can get away with, for the lowest cost.

"Stuffy" air is your body detecting CO2. You should totally do something about it.

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