Day 15 House Assembly

Wednesday, 1/17/18

Today is the last day of the house assembly. The Bensonwood crew is finalizing all the sealing and doing a blower door test (DoE article on blower door tests) to check for air leaks. The test uses a fan in a doorway to pull a vacuum on the house. We then walk around to feel and look for air leaks. A thermal camera may be useful when looking for leaks. We found two, which we quickly closed.
Philip Sets Up Blower Door Test
The blower door test was very successful. Bensonwood is known for tight buildings, with blower door tests that register less than 1 air change per hour at 50 pascals. (Pascals is a measure of pressure. 50 Pascals is .00725 psi, so it isn't very much pressure.) Our house registered .6 ACH50 (air changes per hour at 50 Pascals), which is the threshold for the PassivHaus standard. (The actual measurement was 600 CFM50 at 50 Pascals, then the ACH50 figure was calculated, based on the interior volume. An interesting article about blower door testing suggested reversing the blower door fan to pressurize the building and using theatrical smoke inside the building. Then go outside and look for smoke leaking out.)
Under Roof
End of Day 15 - Assembly Complete
Things will get much less interesting from here, as most of the work moves indoors.  We have one more door to set and we'll have a fully enclosed building.

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