I have a new house (built in 2020) and it did come with an inefficient, underpowered mechanical ventilation intake that just pulled outside air directly into th

I have a new house (built in 2020) and it did come with an inefficient, underpowered mechanical ventilation intake that just pulled outside air directly into the home. Given the house is in Austin, Texas where the weather outside rarely matches the conditions inside, this results in a lot of cooling or heating loss, as well as losing the humidity conditioning of the indoor air. It's no wonder that I regularly hear locals advising folks to simply turn off the mechanical ventilator; bringing in hot, humid summer air or cold, dry winter air is not good, even if the fresh air is. That's why shortly after moving in, I had the garbage ventilator replaced with an ERV. Based on my research I selected a Renewaire EV-Premium L, a variable speed unit which does up to 280 CFM. That's a ton of fresh air, even for a 4300 sqft house. But importantly it preserves some of the temperature and humidity when exchanging the air, so it's a lot more efficient than a plain mechanical ventilator. I have it wired into my Ecobee thermostat. It runs at its configurable low speed 24/7, and the Ecobee puts it in boost mode (full output) for 10-15 minutes per hour. This setup did cost some money of course, but the $2000 cost was pretty minor in the context of a new home. With this setup, we never see a buildup of CO2, VOCs, etc indoors. Definitely worth it when we're both working from home and spending most of our time there. And although we have a gas cooktop, I never see any indoor air quality issues so long as we're running the hood while cooking. I hope indoor air quality becomes a bigger priority for homes, offices, and schools. The building codes in this area haven't yet caught up to the need for improved ventilation to account for how much better sealed up modern buildings are.