Blower Door Tests - More Than a Good Idea

Blower Door tests have always been a great idea and are part of Comfenergy's Home Comfort Evaluations.  

What are the benefits of having a blower door test 

Blower door tests are an important component of evaluating your property’s propensity for uncontrolled air leaks.  Building Science has focused attention on controlling air leaks into or out of the building envelope as a part of an overall strategy for improving the energy efficiency of a structure. Blower door tests had once been limited to use by Energy Auditors and Energy Raters participating in construction of or retrofitting homes to meet Energy Star or other design criteria.

What a blower door test can identify

Comfenergy will conduct one of these tests as part of our FREE home comfort evaluation. It will allow us to depressurize your home, and identify the pathways for uncontrolled air leakage in your home’s envelope.  Once identified, several strategies can be developed and prioritized to create projects that can be done in total or in a phased approach to tighten the performance of your home to move towards the requirements of current building codes.

Why is this Important:

Your House will become more comfortable. 

Your house will have healthier air quality as fewer allergens will be leaking into the home. 

You will reduce the energy that you spend to heat or cool air that then simply leaks to the environment.

Blower door tests can reduce the uncontrolled air leakage in your home to a single number.  The process is to put your home into a winter condition and to reduce the pressure inside your home in order to simulate the way your home would perform when in a 15 mile per hour wind.  The number of Cubic Feet of air that is required to maintain this pressure is then measured.  This measurement can then be used to determine how many air changes per hour your home is experiencing under this standard environment.  Any projects done to improve your leakage rate can then be measured in terms of reduction of the air changes per hour.

So consider finding out how your house is performing.  Most of our customers are shocked at how poorly their homes perform (even those that have been recently constructed). When you schedule a home comfort evaluation with Comfenergy, certified home energy specialists, you can find out exactly where your home is losing energy and costing you money.