Blower Door Testing is often used by qualified and experienced home energy professionals as an important tool. This test is considered to be extremely useful in determining how much air is entering a home or escaping from it. Professional energy testers have been using blower door tests for quite some time now in order to measure or determine the level of air tightness in a home.
One can even find several useful videos all over the Internet that show how these professionals conduct this unique test. It can also help them understand how a contractor that provides air leakage test solutions in UAE efficiently utilises the diagnostic information. This information that has been provided by the tests are mainly used for identifying certain key areas of air leakage in the home of their clients.
Such improvements in the building help the talented professionals make various energy-saving improvements too.
Key energy-saving improvements from blower door testing services
• Reduction in the consumption level of energy that has been caused due to the excess leakage of air.
• Avoiding problems that are related to moisture condensation
• Determination of the proper sizing and requirements of airflow along with cooling equipment.
• Controlling and restricting the entry of outdoor contaminants, odours, pests and several other pollutants from entering the house of the client.
• Determining if there is any need for mechanical ventilation in order to provide an acceptable amount of fresh air and in the process maintain the healthy air quality in the indoors of the home.
• Avoiding drafts caused due by cold or warm air getting leaked in from outside. These drafts of cold air can be quite uncomfortable for those insides.
What is a blower door?
Blower doors basically act like a powerful fan that has been mounted by a trained professional. This door is usually put in the frame of an exterior doorway for some time. Once the device is calibrated the fan efficiently pulls out the air from the house. When this air gets pulled the air pressure inside the house gets lowered. The higher level of outside air pressure would then enter through the various unsealed gaps, cracks, wiring penetration and other similar places.
In certain cases when the professional feels that the existing conditions of the room would not allow the lowering of the air pressure, they operate the fan in reverse mode. This is done along with an increase in air pressure inside the home. During the blower tests, most professionals and experts use infrared cameras for looking into the walls, floors, ceilings and any other specific location where there is any lack of insulation that has caused air to leak.
Some analysts or professionals even prefer to use a nontoxic smoke pencil that is quite suitable in determining or detecting air leaks in the home of an individual. According to several reputed enterprises that offer exceptional blower door test solutions in UAE, these tests can prove to be quite essential in understanding the rate of air infiltration of a home. Most contractors of such solutions feel that during the energy assessment project the blower door test should be also conducted.
This test can even be performed during airsealing. The two major types of blower doors are the calibrated doors and the uncalibrated ones. Calibrated doors are of great importance in blower door tests. This is mainly because these blower doors consist of several gauges that are responsible for measuring the amount of air that is flowing out of a house through fans. Uncalibrated blower doors on the other hand can only locate the leaks present in homes.
The uncalibrated doors do not provide any technique for determining the overall tightness in a home. The reliable data provided by the Calibrated doors are of great use and importance to conductors. This data is considered to be useful in quantifying the total amount of air leakage before the installation of air sealing improvements.
How is the house prepared for a blower door test?
The home energy professionals have to perform the blower door tests that would include various aspects like properly analysing the home, preparing the room for the blower door test and finally conducting the test.
• Companies that offer blower door test solutions in Dubai contact their clients and have a walk-through in the home. The clients can inform them about the various areas that usually cause air leakage.
• The contractor or auditor from the company would request access to different areas of the home including attics, crawl spaces, built-in cabinets, closets and other places.
• They might need to close the exterior doors and windows of the place. Usually, they set controls on different atmospheric fuel applications including water heaters, furnaces, stoves, fireplaces and others.
• Clients can expect these tests to take around an hour when performed by dignified and talented professionals. However, this time would also depend on the complexity of the home.
