Why Home Energy Auditors Use Blower Door Testing

If you have never heard of blower door testing then you obviously haven’t had a home energy audit done for your house. This basic test is one of the primary tools used by professional home energy auditors. This test is one of the most effective tests for determining where there are air leaks in your house. By finding the leaks and sealing them up, you can save a lot of wasted energy. This results in a greener house and a much lower electricity bill.

How does the blower door test work? It’s actually fairly simple. The professional home energy auditor will set up a blower door fan in your home. In most cases, the fan will be placed in the front doorway area. The purpose of the fan is to suck out all of the air from the inside of the house (a process more formally known as depressurizing the home). What does this do? Well, when you pull out all of the inside air, the outside air will rush into the house through any leaks that exist.

Once the blower door fan is running, the professional home energy auditor is going to go from room to room. What he’s doing is checking for these leaks. He’ll make a note of all of the areas where outside air is coming into the house. He’ll be able to analyze what needs to be done to seal up these leaks in the most efficient manner.

Although finding the leaks is obviously important, it’s actually not the most important thing that this test does for you. As professional home energy auditor Dr. Energy Saver points out, "a blower door test also allows your home’s air-leakage rate to be calculated". Your professional auditor is going to be able to do a simple calculation using the information from the blower door test to determine exactly how much damage your home is suffering from air leakage. This will give you a clear picture of how much energy is lost to these leaks.

The blower door test is just one of many tests that a professional home energy auditor is going to perform. However, it is one of the most crucial tests that will be done. Sealing up the leaks in the home is one of the biggest things that you can do to make sure that your home is the most energy-efficient home that it can be.

For more information on home energy audits please read the other articles in this series.

Part One: Home Energy Audits Make Saving Energy Easy

Part Two: Using Thermography to Reduce Home Energy Waste

Part Four: Using the PFT Air Infiltration Measurement Technique in a Home Energy Audit