Blower Door Testing in Your NH and Maine Home

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A blower door test is a crucial part of a home energy assessment. It is key to finding out how your home loses heated or cooled air due to air leakage, and how you find out exactly where drafts are coming from.
The Simplified Green Homes auditor testing your Rochester, Concord or Portsmouth-area home will let you know how you can stop the leaks with a full report. Our weatherization and air sealing/insulation teams are at the ready to air seal your house.

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Know Where to Air Seal

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Air leakage problems cannot be determined by eye, and insulation levels can't always be visually inspected. So how do you know where to air seal?

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The blower door test allows your energy auditor to locate problem areas in your house. When used with a thermal imaging camera, the blower door can show the auditor hidden air leakage problems, and areas where insulation is missing, for example.

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Insulation Performance: What is an R-Value?

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The "R" in R-value stands for Resistance. R-value is a way of measuring how well a material resists heat flow. The higher the R-value per inch of thickness of the material, the better the resistance to heat flow. One of the best insulating materials on the market today is closed cell polyurethane foam. This spray on insulation comes in at R-6.5 per inch of thickness when it's installed. This is pretty much double that of fibrous insulations like fiberglass and cellulose (R-3.2 to R-3.8).

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A Post-Audit Report

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After the test is finished, the auditor calculates the air leakage rate for your house. A big number indicates a lot of air leakage. All of this information is gathered up and summarized by Simplified Green Homes in the post-audit report.

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A Key Part of a Home Energy Assessment

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The blower door test results, air leakage locations and air change rate per hour are all key in assessing the performance of your house and determining the correct recommendations to improve your New Hampshire and Maine home's energy efficiency.

Without the blower door test, there's no way to measure how much the performance of your house improves once air sealing work is done. Because of this, most energy efficiency programs, like Home Performance with Energy Star, for example, require a blower door test as part of a comprehensive energy assessment.

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Is Your Home's Air Quality Suffering?

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In addition, a blower door can also be used to determine indoor air quality problems associated with gas or oil-fired furnaces, boilers and water heaters. A "Combustion Air Zone" (CAZ) test indicates if there is a possible problem spillage of combustion products due to backdrafting or poorly performing equipment.

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Combustion safety can cause indoor air quality problems that can lead to health issues. We're here to help you identify and solve problems so that your household is comfortable, healthy and energy efficient.

Questions about blower door testing? Contact Simplified Green Homes today!

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