Sunbelt

Blower door testing is the standard for testing the building envelope's resistance to air infiltration.

First of all, good building insulation is commonly confused by many as all that is needed to ensure that a building's envelope will perform up to required standards to deliver an energy efficient structure. While it is true that some insulating methods do offer better protection to the infiltration of moving air, insulation by itself doesn't guarantee that a structure's envelope will deliver the desired performance. A blower door test is actually quite simple. A technician simply installs a big  calibrated fan in an outside opening in the structure and then the amount of air that leaks from the structure is measured at different pressures(or vacuums). This resulting numbers allow us to estimate how the structure will perform in the real world. There can be some good news and bad news associated with a blower door test. Many issues with construction methods that cause a building to leak are sometimes difficult to resolve after the building is built. While this can be considered bad news, the good news is that in most cases a loose structure can usually be improved with proper identification of the issue and sealing of the structure after it has been built. Of course, the optimum results are best obtained when a good understanding of construction methods needed to construct a tight envelope are understood by the different trades and everyone works toward the goal of "building a tight structure".

Sunbelt Heating and Air Conditioning, Inc. has been doing blower door testing in the Pottawatomie County area since the mid 1980's. In fact, few companies in the entire state have been proving proof of performance longer than we have.

This article was written by Dean Akin, President and Founder of Sunbelt Heating and Air Conditioning, Inc.

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