Inaugural Experiment Success!!

[Laurie Catey]

Thanks to all who participated in the infamous Blower Door Test today, 10/6/11! It really was fun learning for me, and I hope it was for you too! I think we already have some followup studies percolating...

We are in the process of analyzing our results so that we can report out to everyone what truth we found, but some of the initial comments and observations heard around the lab today seem to point in the direction of having achieved a tight building.

- Ken remarked that he has more often than not had to use more air through his blower door fan for regular houses. He had to put a collar on to reduce floor for ours. That's a good sign!

- Smoke tracers really seemed to show little air movement at doors and windows, except for the garage door, which we already knew has issues.

You can visit the Blower Door Test workbook for more detailed observations made by the group and the measured data that we took today. If you have any ideas on reducing infiltration on rolling garage doors, we'd love to hear any and all thoughts on the matter. More to come!

[Laurie Catey]

I meant to say that he (Ken) reduced the flow (not the floor!) putting a collar on the fan inlet to partially block it. Sorry!

Also, just a note...I'm labeling this a success even though we don't know the final numbers compared to the BPI standards or our design criteria because whatever the final results, we will know the truth about building leakage, and that is what the Labs is all about. So, that's a success!