Air exchanger, humidity worse

first time post here... I recently purchased a 10 year old home and am starting to have some humidity issues in the basement. There were no humidity issues during the summer (i assume the a/c did the job), but recently, the humidity has gotten bad enough to create a horrible smell in the basement. I've set my air exchanger to about 40%, let it run for about 24hrs, but the smell got worse!! Honestly it smells like poop. I shut it off, and the smell subsided a little (but was still there). I verified that the ducts and filter were clean, and gave it another shot, but again, the smell got worse. Went to my local hardware shop and picked-up a dehumidifier. Ran it for a few hours and noticed a great improvement. Since then I have not used the air exchanger until this evening. I shut down the dehumdifier and set my exchanger to 40%, to my disappoitement the smell got bad after a few hours. The air coming into the house smells fresh and clean, so my only conlcusion is that the humidity is rising. What happens if the relative humidify outside is higher than the Rh inside the house? Is this humidity brought into the house. Does an air exchanger really dehumidify? if yes, does the Rh outside need to be lower than the RH inside? This seems to be the case, I checked my local weather and the humidity outside is about 82%. Indoors it's about 60%. I hope someone can help me out with this. btw, i'm in Montreal Canada...nice cool fall weather. The air exchanger is an Aston 2604-e (i could not find any info about it on the web). If your just moving the basement air out and bringing in outside air you are bringing in the RH. Turn your dehumidifier back on and only use your air exchanger when you have heat or AC on. Originally Posted by airman.1994 If your just moving the basement air out and bringing in outside air you are bringing in the RH. Turn your dehumidifier back on and only use your air exchanger when you have heat or AC on. That's what i thought. Funny how the air exchanger manual doesn't specify this, it says that it can be used all year round to dehumidify the house. Originally Posted by Paul_m That's what i thought. Funny how the air exchanger manual doesn't specify this, it says that it can be used all year round to dehumidify the house. I couldn't find any information on Aston on the net but check weather it's an HRV or an ERV. HRVs exchange the air in the house but do not exchange the humidity. Therefore in Canada you can only use the HRV in the winter. It will control the indoor humidity in the winter and will help prevent sweating on the windows. ERVs can be used all year round. They not only exchange the air but also exchange the indoor humidity. In the summer the humid air coming in is sent back outdoors with the outgoing airstream. In the winter the indoor air which you humidify with your whole house humidifier is recaptured by the ERV and brought back in through the incoming airstream. Another thing to check is the type of installation you have. A simplified install requires that you run your furnace fan continuous with your HRV/ERV. A dedicated install with dedicated venting in the kitchen and washrooms does not require the furnace fan to run with the HRV/ERV system.

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