Last year we built an energy star home for a customer and we used a blower door test to evaluate the houses air infiltration performance.
Blower door test diagram.
This process will cause outside air to be drawn into the house through leakage points.
Simply put a blower door is a diagnostic tool used to measure how much air infiltration air leakage occurs in a house.
A powerful fan is mounted in a temporary airtight frame of an exterior door.
There are three primary components to a blower door.
The auditors may use a smoke pencil to detect air leaks.
The blower door test is a diagnostic tool used to measure the airtightness of a structure.
The combined effort tightening building envelopes and installing mechanical ventilation can help resolve these issues and be verified by a blower door test.
Performing a blower door test to determine building envelope tightness is fairly straightforward for a single family home.
To conduct a blower door test an infiltrometer or blower door fan is placed in the main entry doorway to depressurize the house or suck out air from the interior.
Blower door system mechanics.
Understanding blower door test results.
A blower door is a machine used to measure the airtightness of buildings.
This diagram illustrates how we eliminate air leaks in the home click to enlarge.
Cruise 50 fan speed controller the cruise 50 box can be unchecked by left clicking on the box if you would like manual control of the house pressure.
These pages describes how to build a pretty good blower door for about 30.
A blower door system is a frame canvas fan and pressure gauge assembly that is set up in an exterior doorway.
Multi family buildings present a more significant challenge since a typical blower door test will measure leakage to the adjacent spaces as well as leakage to the outside.
You can use it to 1 find air infiltration leaks into your house 2 trace your progress in sealing the house 3 estimate your infiltration flow at 50 pa a blower door standard and compare it to other homes 4 estimate your heat loss due to infiltration and 5 estimate fuel saving and co2 reduction from air.
Thermal image scan using a forward looking infrared camera flir a powerful tool in the energy auditors hands is the flir or forward looking infrared camera.
The movable tab on the fan speed controller slide bar now becomes active to adjust the.
This blower door test will also measure the quality of the indoor air and any moisture or condensation problems.
It can also be used to measure airflow between building zones to test ductwork airtightness and to help physically locate air leakage sites in the building envelope.
1 a calibrated variable speed fan capable of inducing a range of airflows sufficient to.
Blower door flow the blower door flow is displayed on the lower right side of the house zone.
