What Is A Good Blower Door Test Result

In the report you ll see a reading for the ach an acronym that stands for air changes per hour.

What is a good blower door test result.

Once he is done with his walk through your auditor will begin the test. Air flow at 50 pascals is the preferred value for blower door testing the amount of airflow measured in cubic feet per minute cfm for a. The blower door test. You ll receive a report at the end of the test that will let you see how airtight your home is.

A blower door test is used on buildings in order to quantify the amount of air leakage through its enclosure. 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. This test ensures a certain level of energy performance and is often used when a project team is aiming for a performance based building standard like passive house which requires a blower door test result of less than 0 6 air changes per hour at 50 pascals of pressure ach 50. The auditor will set up his blower door in an outer door facing outward to depressurize your home in most cases.

Higher numbers are worse. Blower door test results are standardized for an air pressure difference of 50 pa. This tells you how often the air in your house would be entirely replaced if the fan ran nonstop. It s a linear scale so 2000 is twice as bad as 1000.

There are three primary components to a blower door. What does the blower door number mean. Understanding blower door test results. Better consistency and reproducibility occur at higher pressures.

A good rule of thumb is that your home should have a blower door number less than or equal to its square footage. If your home is 2000 square feet a blower door number of 2000 cfm50 is decent. Blower door test results can determine the airtightness of the building and can be presented in a number of different formats. The following will help you conduct your.

Simply put a blower door is a diagnostic tool used to measure how much air infiltration air leakage occurs in a house. 1 a calibrated variable speed fan capable of inducing a range of airflows sufficient to. During this test a calibrated fan is installed in an otherwise sealed door or window while all the other openings to the exterior are closed. Here are some things to know.

Blower door tests are performed by trained and certified energy auditors but a homeowner can conduct a mini test to help pinpoint leaky areas of the home. The test requires a few parameters be set to yield accurate results. 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. He will systematically move about your home setting up the house for the test.