Does your home have comfort issues? Are some rooms too cold or too hot? You may have a leaky building. Leaky buildings, air leaky that is, can cause comfort issues for occupants and may cause other building related problems such as ice dams, mold, condensation, and other air quality issues. Blower door testing can assist in finding the cause of these problems.
Do you need a blower door test for a new construction building? Some municipalities require homes undergo blower door testing to confirm that the building performs to current energy requirements. We can help with this testing to satisfy building energy efficiency requirements.
What is a Blower Door?
A blower door is a device that pressurizes or depressurizes your home to be able to quantify how much air moves through the building surfaces. The more air that moves through the building surfaces will impact occupant comfort and cause other building related problems. On a cold winter night you would most likely not leave a bedroom window open right? That is essentially what happens when you add up all of the small gaps and cracks in your building walls and ceilings. A blower door is a large fan capable of pulling air through the house and replacing the air in the home, while also quantifying the amount of air that was removed. The amount of air is quantified by using a high precision manometer, such as this one by The Energy Conservatory. This results in numbers such as CFM (Cubic Feet per Minute) and ACH (Air Change per Hour).
Depressurization is the most common blower door test. This is pulling air out of the house though a door (typically the front door), and replacing the air through various openings in the walls and ceiling. Blower door test pressures are measured in pascals (pa). The typical pressure used is 50 pa. Measurements are reported as CFM50 or ACH50. This means the cubic feet per minute of air at 50 pascals of pressure or air changes per hour at 50 pascals of pressure.
Blower Door Test Example
Let’s say you have a home with 2,000 square feet of living space with 8 foot ceilings. This results in 16,000 cubic feet of living space in the home. A blower door test is conducted and you get a result of 2,500 CFM50 from the test. This would result in an air change of 6.4 ACH50. Repairs are then conducted, such as air sealing the attic hatch or various light fixtures, windows, etc. The home can then be tested again to show repairs were done properly. New construction homes are built to a standard which requires an air change amount of 3 ACH50 or up to 5 ACH50 depending on location. Some older homes may measure at 15 ACH50 (very leaky).
Conclusion
Do you need to test your new construction home for compliance? Is your home uncomfortable or are you having building performance issues? Call our office at 815-978-7785 for a quote. We work throughout Northern Illinois for this type of testing. Do you need your ducts tested? Click this link to learn more about our duct testing services. Does your home have other comfort problems? We can do a whole home assessment including total HVAC system airflow, blower door testing, duct testing, thermal imaging, combustion testing, CAZ (Combustion Appliance Zone) testing, and much more.