What is a VRV System?
VRV stands for Variable Refrigerant Volume. It is ultimately interchangeable with the term VRF meaning Variable Refrigerant Flow although VRV is trademarked to Daikin. People use both terms to refer to this kind of system.
VRV is a very sophisticated type of multi split system. It is most commonly used for commercial buildings and allows for each area it services to be individually controlled. That is, each split system can be set to an optimal temperature for its environment.
The flow of refrigerant is variable and is controlled behind the scenes by the system depending on the demands on the system in each area. The system is also economical due to this precise control of refrigerant flow.
VRV allows for several indoor units to be on the same refrigerant circuit and is scalable in that more indoor units can be added if a premises expands in size.
Each indoor unit is usually controlled by its own wall mounted controller.
Types of VRV Systems
There are 3 different types of VRV systems:
- Cooling only which don’t have heating functionality,
- the heat pump system which is the most popular and allows for both heating and cooling in the same system (although not in different indoor units at the same time) and,
- the most sophisticated system of all, the Heat Recovery System, which does allow for cooling or heating individually between each indoor unit.
