What an HRV Actually Costs to Install on the North Shore

What an HRV does, and why it costs what it costs

A heat recovery ventilator is a mechanical box, usually mounted in a mechanical room or attic, that constantly exchanges stale indoor air for fresh outdoor air while recovering most of the heat from the outgoing air stream before it leaves the house. Two separate duct systems run to it: supply ducts carrying fresh air to bedrooms and living spaces, and exhaust ducts pulling stale, humid air from bathrooms, the kitchen, and the laundry room. The core of the unit, a heat exchanger, transfers warmth from the outgoing exhaust air into the incoming fresh air without mixing the two air streams together.

For any HRV project, three cost categories add up: the unit itself, the ductwork connecting it to every room it serves, and the labour to install, connect, and balance the whole system so each room gets the airflow it needs. On a new house under construction, all three are straightforward, since the ducts get designed before the framing goes up. On a renovation of an existing North Shore house, the ductwork line item is where the real cost and the real uncertainty both live.

2026 price ranges by house size and routing difficulty

The unit itself is a modest cost across the range of sizes a North Shore house typically needs. A residential HRV sized for a home under roughly 2,000 square feet runs $1,200 to $2,200 for the equipment alone. A larger unit sized for a 3,000 to 4,000 square foot home, with the airflow capacity Table 9.32.3.5 of the BC Building Code sets for that floor area and bedroom count, runs $2,000 to $3,500 for the equipment.

Installation labour and ductwork are where the real spread happens, and the driver is not the size of the house so much as how accessible the framing is. A home with an unfinished basement, an attic with room to route ducts, or a mechanical room already sized for the equipment sees labour and ductwork land at $3,000 to $6,000. A fully finished home with no existing chases between floors, where every duct run means opening and patching finished ceilings or walls, sees the same scope of work run $7,000 to $9,000 or more in labour and ductwork alone.

Put those together and the total installed cost for a fully ducted, whole-house HRV in an existing North Shore home runs $4,500 to $12,000 in 2026. New construction, where the ducts are designed into the framing from the start, sits at the lower half of that range even on a larger house, because there is no finished surface to open and repair.

Ducted whole-house HRV vs a single-room unit

A fully ducted HRV connects to the whole house through a network of supply and exhaust ducts, one system serving every bedroom, living space, and wet room. This is what the BC Building Code has in mind when it sets a whole-house airflow rate under Table 9.32.3.5, based on floor area and bedroom count, and it is the standard approach on a whole-home renovation or new construction.

A single-room or point-of-use unit is a smaller device that ventilates one room or a small addition on its own, without tying into ductwork serving the rest of the house. These units make sense for a specific renovation scenario, like a basement suite conversion where the main house already has its own ventilation system and the new suite needs its own independent one, or a small addition where running ductwork back to the main house's HRV is not practical.

The distinction that matters for code compliance: a single-room unit on its own does not satisfy the whole-house mechanical ventilation requirement set by Article 9.32.3.1 of the BC Building Code for a full renovation or new dwelling unit. It can be part of a compliant system, particularly for a secondary suite's own dedicated ventilation, but it is not a substitute for whole-house ducted ventilation on a project that requires one.

Why routing is the real cost driver, not the equipment

An HRV needs a supply duct run to every bedroom and major living space, and an exhaust duct run from every bathroom, the kitchen, and the laundry. On a new build, that is a design decision made before the first stud goes up. On an existing North Shore house, especially the 1960s and 1970s stock common in Lynn Valley, Edgemont, and Upper Lonsdale, that means finding a path through a house that was built without those chases in mind.

The common obstacles are predictable once you have seen enough of them: a low crawl space that limits where ductwork can run beneath the main floor, floor joists running the wrong direction relative to where a duct needs to cross, and a finished basement ceiling that nobody wants to tear out and rebuild. Where a vertical chase already exists, like a furnace closet or a plumbing stack running through multiple floors, ducts can sometimes piggyback through that same path and cut installation time significantly.

This is why we always recommend planning HRV ductwork before any drywall goes back on during a whole-home renovation, even if the mechanical decision about which unit to buy comes later. Once ceilings and walls close up, the cheapest routing opportunity in the entire project has passed, and every later change means opening finished surfaces again.

• Plan duct routing during the framing and rough-in stage, before drywall closes any ceiling or wall.
• Check for existing vertical chases, furnace closets, or plumbing stacks that new ductwork can share.
• Confirm crawl space height and joist direction before assuming a basement route is straightforward.
• Get the mechanical contractor and the general contractor coordinating on the same schedule, not sequenced as an afterthought.
• Where retrofitting a finished ceiling is unavoidable, budget separately for drywall patch and paint repair alongside the ductwork line item.

How the BC Energy Step Code changes the ventilation math

The BC Energy Step Code sets airtightness targets for new construction and some major renovations, measured by a blower door test as air changes per hour at 50 pascals of pressure, written as ACH50. The tighter the house, the less air leaks through gaps and cracks on its own, which sounds like a pure win until you remember that older houses relied on exactly that accidental leakage to move stale, moist air out.

Once a house is built or renovated to a tight Step Code target, mechanical ventilation stops being optional in any practical sense, even on the two code paths that do not technically require heat recovery. Throwing conditioned indoor air outside through a non-recovery ventilation system in a very tight house wastes a meaningful share of the heating energy the tight envelope was built to save, which is why the Province's own Step Code cost-modelling assumes a heat recovery ventilator in nearly every home built to the higher steps.

For a renovation specifically, there is no fixed dollar or percentage threshold in the BC Building Code that automatically triggers a Step Code airtightness target. Municipal building officials use judgement on alterations to existing buildings, deciding case by case what is appropriate for the specific scope. What we tell clients doing a substantial North Shore renovation, meaning new windows, envelope air sealing, and insulation upgrades across most of the house, is to plan for mechanical ventilation regardless of whether the permit technically requires it, because the physics of a tighter envelope apply to the house either way.

What drives the price up or down on your specific project

Number of wet rooms matters more than most homeowners expect. Each bathroom, the kitchen, and the laundry room needs its own exhaust duct run back to the unit, so a house with four bathrooms costs more to duct than a house with two, independent of overall square footage.

Where the unit itself gets mounted changes access cost. An attic installation needs a service platform and sometimes a dedicated attic ladder or hatch upgrade, while a mechanical room installation on the main level or in the basement is usually more straightforward to service over the life of the equipment, which matters because filters need regular cleaning and the core needs periodic maintenance.

Bundling the HRV installation with a whole-home renovation, rather than adding it as a standalone retrofit to a finished house, is consistently the lower-cost path. When walls and ceilings are already open for other reasons, the added cost of running HRV ductwork through them is a fraction of what the same ductwork costs when a contractor has to open and repair finished surfaces specifically for the mechanical work.