Why no door envelope testing when passive certification is bypassed? (homeowner post)

[cavendum.e...@gmail.com]

Here's an issue I think prospective passive house customers should be aware of.

Some background. When I did a build in 2015/16 I choose not to go for passive certification.  Among other reasons, I used a conventional hot water heater instead of a propane fuelled heater as recommended to me to help pass certification.  When my building envelope was sealed, and before window and door installation was complete, a blower door test was performed and passed. Doors had been blue taped to seal them during the test.

Four months went by and I asked my builder (Artisan's Group); When was the door and window portion of the building envelope was going to be tested for air infiltration? The answer was that no further testing would be performed because I had not gone for passive certification.   

So some questions for the group: 

What is the purpose of testing the building envelope when only a portion of it is actually tested?

How can the condition of the doors as delivered to the build site be assured if they aren't checked somehow?  My doors and windows (Zola) came from the EU so had to endure a container crossing as well as shipment by truck.

How can the correctness of the door installation into the structure be verified if no form of infiltration testing is done? 

Do all builders follow this policy?

I'd be interested in hearing from other passive homeowners and finding out if they've had this same experience (or not!).  If I had known in advance that no testing of the door and window portion of the house was the builder's policy for a "non-certified" house, it would figured into my builder selection.  I'd urge other prospective passive house buyers to nail this issue down before starting a build.  Don't be "surprised" like I was.  

As it turns out, there were air infiltration issues with all three of my doors, which I'll go into in a follow-on post.  

C 

[Adam Cohen]

It is my opinion that the testing protocols for the PHIUS + system be followed on all high permanence buildings, certified or not

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[Daniel Roy]

Unless your local or State Building Code requires a final as built blower door test, it seems to me that it reduces down to what your agreement was with the builder.  It sounds like you don't have a written agreement so I would check the Codes.  In any case, as a CPHC and PE who also lives in a Certified Passive House  (Project 1096 on PHIUS website), my wife and I found the house itself to be fantastic and is a net negative carbon footprint aided in part by the PV installed on the roof.  We did five blower door tests during construction (as a lab experiment of sorts) to determine what each major component contributed to the final leakage.  With just the shell constructed and the full air barrier established (we intentionally sheathed over the windows and door openings), we tested at about 26% of the old PHIUS requirement (max of .6 ACH).  Adding the Makrowin windows and doors but before the Final test, the leakage more than doubled to about 60% of allowed maximum.  Note that this small added leakage could be coming from both the double sealed windows themselves and the areas around the rough openings.  There was no easy way to determine this, even with a smoke test since the levels were so low.  Still an excellent low leakage value.  We have so far (about 2 1/2+ years) been extremely pleased with the house and the Makrowin products aluminum clad tilt turn windows.    After final test, we were at 62% of max or .37 ACH.  Bottom line is for us, windows roughly doubled the leakage, but still well below the requirements.  As an aside, the new PHIUS+ 2015 leakage criteria was relaxed a bit and using this new criteria, we are only at 36% of the max allowable.  I hope this helps quantify for you leakages on an actual installation.

Dan Roy CPHC

On Thu, Jul 14, 2016 at 10:56 AM, <cavendum.e...@gmail.com> wrote:

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Dan Roy

 

508 388 7557

[Hayden Robinson]

C,

 

If you want another blower-door test you can get another-blower door test. The question is who should pay for it?

 

It’s  reasonable to expect your builder to do what you’ve both agreed—that’s what they get paid for. It’s unreasonable to expect them to do anything for free.

 

Since you’ve read your window warranty, I’m guessing that you’ve read your owner/contractor agreement and that the test you want is not in it? In your email below, I’m also reading that your house did not intent to meet the Passive House standard, which makes it hard to argue that you and the builder had agreed to build a passive house.

 

I’m working with very little information, but what I’m reading suggests that either the project was poorly defined, or that it was well defined, but that what you agreed to pay for and what you wanted were different things—at least with respect to blower-door testing.  In the absence of a clearly defined scope of work, it is not surprising that you and the builder could understand the project differently.

 

My take away would be that clarity matters.

 

Yours,

Hayden

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