Passive House in the Woods

First Blower Door Test successfully completed

June 6th, 2010 by Tim Delhey Eian

Blower Door Test Result: 93 CFM at 50 Pascal

Blower door with duct blaster

Testing for leaks with smoke

With the help of Gary Nelson of the Energy Conservatory in Minneapolis, we were able to conduct a first series of blower door tests. We pressurized and depressurized the building, and used a smoke generator to identify leaks. This was an amazing process and helped us gain a great deal of understanding for the little details that make a building air-tight. In the end, the building delivered an average of 0.36 ACH50. We are excited to have surpassed the Passive House requirement of 0.6 ACH50 during this preliminary test.

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Posted in Progress Report | 3 Comments

3 Responses to “First Blower Door Test successfully completed”

1. First Blower Door Test successfully completed « Morr Construction Blog says:

   June 7, 2010 at 12:51 pm

   [...] 7, 2010 First Blower Door Test successfully completed. Posted by Josh Crenshaw Filed in Passive House in the Woods Leave a Comment [...]
2. Nick Harris says:

   June 10, 2010 at 1:57 am

   Wow, that is a shockingly low CFM reading! We do residential energy efficiency upgrades and are accustomed to seeing more in the 3,000-10,000CFM at 50PA range.

   One thing I noticed on your DG700 is that it is set in the DB-B configuration (top left part of the screen). This is the configuration setting for a duct blaster which is used to test duct leakage. For homes this tight, are you using the duct blaster configuration?
3. Tim Delhey Eian says:

   June 10, 2010 at 8:46 am

   Nick,
   Gary Nelson did indeed use a duct blaster for the test.