Tightening up to Zero: the Blower Door test Blowout!

Creating a tight envelope is a critical goal in shooting for a zero energy home. And it is not enough to simply apply the correct techniques and materials, it is essential that we have a measure of their effectiveness. This is where the blower door test comes in. A blower door test is a diagnostic tool designed to test the air tightness of buildings.

A blower-door fan is sealed into an exterior doorway, all the house vents are temporarily sealed, and the calibrated fan blows air out of the house creating a pressure difference between the inside and outside, which draws air into all of the inadequately sealed cracks, holes and penetrations. A pressure sensing device is used to measure the rate of pressure change/leakage. The data is entered into a standardized formula and the number of Natural Air Changes per Hour (NACH) is derived. Typical production-built homes built under current building codes will score at about 0.5NACH or higher (one complete air change every two hours). A well built, near zero energy home aims for a score of 0.1-0.2NACH. EarthCraft Virginia officials, including Chuk Bowles, Technical Director (tending to the pressure monitor above) and KC McGurren, Executive Director, supervised the testing of our home this week.

As KC is indicating in the picture, the results were encouraging! We registered a score of 0.16NACH, reflecting approximately one complete air change every 6 hours, approximately 3 times tighter than a well built new conventional home! Mark Waring, our builder, said that he was very pleased with this performance, which reflects the tightest home he has built to date. This tightness will minimize the heating/cooling load, reducing the demand on the geothermal system and putting less draw on the solar PV array.