Performance Testing

Is your house leaking? In many homes, air leaks are found in holes cut where plumbing, wiring, lighting, and duct work are installed. In addition, your ducts may also be leaking.

Sealing a home's envelope — its exterior walls, ceiling, and floors—is an important step in controlling the indoor environment and lowering energy bills. The goal is to reduce air leakage as much as possible, while providing ventilation as needed for fresh air. In other words, "build it tight and ventilate it right."

Some signs that your home may be leaking air:

• High summer and winter utility bills
• Rooms that are difficult to heat and cool
• Stuffy rooms that never seem to feel comfortable
• Ducts are located in an attic, unfinished basement, crawlspace or garage
• Tangled or kinked flexible ducts in your system

If your home has a leaky envelope, you are losing air to the outside that you have already paid to heat or cool. The more your home leaks, the longer a furnace or air conditioner has to run to maintain comfort. This means higher utility bills—year in and year out.

Getting Started

The first step to making your house tighter and more efficient is to schedule a Performance Test for your home. Bob's technicians are specially trained and PTCS Certified, so you can be sure that when your Duct and Blower Door tests are performed, and your duct work is sealed, all work will meet or exceed new building code standards.

A blower door is a diagnostic tool designed to measure the airtightness of buildings and to help locate air leakage sites. A blower door consists of a calibrated fan for measuring an airflow rate, and a pressure-sensing device to measure the air pressure created by the fan flow. The combination of pressure and fan-flow measurements are used to determine the building airtightness. The airtightness of a building is useful knowledge when trying to increase energy conservation or decrease indoor air pollution.

A basic blower-door system includes three components: a calibrated fan, a door-panel system, and a device to measure fan flow and building pressure. The blower-door fan is temporarily sealed into an exterior doorway using the door-panel system. The fan is used to blow air into or out of the building, which creates a small pressure difference between inside and outside. This pressure difference forces air through all holes and penetrations in the building enclosure. The tighter the building (e.g. fewer holes), the less air is needed from the blower door fan to create a change in building pressure.

A duct leakage performance test involves pressurizing the duct system with a calibrated fan and simultaneously measuring the air flow through the fan and its effect on the pressure within the duct system. The tighter the duct system, the less air you need from the fan to create a change in duct system pressure. Testing procedures can be set up to measure only duct leaks which are connected to the outside, or to measure total duct leakage (i.e., leaks connected to the outside and inside of the house).

Duct leakage measurements are used to diagnose and demonstrate leakage problems, estimate efficiency losses from duct leakage, and certify the quality of duct system installation.

Once these tests are completed, you will have the diagnostic information you need to take the next steps to making your home more energy efficient. These steps may include Duct Cleaning, Duct Sealing, or upgrading your Furnace or Air Conditioning systems. When properly sealed and insulated, your home will become more comfortable, energy efficient, and safer.

To contact Bob's Heating to get more information or schedule a test, call (800) 840-3346, or go to our Contact Page.

To qualify for our package pricing, you must purchase of one or more of the following:

• Duct Cleaning
• Duct Sealing
• Maintenance Agreement
• Furnace Purchase

More Information