Wired is profiling “Green Ghostbusters,” their nickname for the work of San Francisco startup Sustainable Spaces, a company that uses a suite of gear to determine where a home or office’s heating and cooling systems are working inefficiently.
After closing all the windows and doors, Bowers and Golden depressurize the house by mounting this blower door. [Not this picture. -Ed.] The door contains gauges that measure how much air is being pulled in through the house’s envelope. This house had 36 percent air leakage, according to this test, which is equivalent to punching a 22 inch by 22 inch hole in the wall. Sealing up a house’s outer shell keeps warm (or cold) air in, increasing a house’s energy efficiency.
Green Ghostbusters Nab Hidden Power Leaks [Wired.com]
Image: Jonathan Snyder/Wired
in the uk all new houses (or a certain proportion in a development.. i think 25%) need to be air tightness tested this way. I personally think it is a step a little too far in an already highly regulated industry (in a country with massively overpriced housing) but it does do a good job of highlighting the issue to the builder on the street.
Speaking to people who used to do this kind of testing the kinds of things they’d find were jaw-dropping.
In Germany it’s mandatroy for all new build houses. The latest craze here is a system that brings in fresh air from the outside but does some sort of heat exchange with the warm used-up air inside, so you don’t need to open the windows for like 5 minutes every now and then to get som fresh air inside. I guess it’s because total airtightness has it’s disadvantages to the inhabitants too…
Some Scandinavian houses and apartments that I have visited have been made so thoroughly airtight that they have to add small vents to permit air exchange even in the dead of winter. If you don’t have air exchange (hopefully in conjunction with an air-to-air heat exchanger as mentioned by S3BR4), then you’re basically breathing recycled….you. That and all the volatiles that are in our household products, fellow dwellers, pets, cooking and building components. Simply sealing a house up is like putting a dry cleaning bag over your head — nice and warm for a while but then it gets *very* stuffy. Doing the airtight test is a good check for uncontrolled and unintentional air leaks, but complete sealing can be a disaster.
in the netherlands there are also regulations prescribing airtight insulation, and like S3BR4 mentions heat exchanging ventilation systems. These systems are now on critical review, because up to 60% of the inhabitants of the homes the systems are installed in suffer from (minor) respiratory problems. So it’s good advise is to open your windows now and then and enjoy some fresh air…
This technology has been around in the US for almost 30 years. Like the other posters have said, an air-to-air heat exchanger is a necessity, not a luxury, when a house is tighten up, air leaks-wised. When done right, some homes can be made very comfortable using less than $30 energy for a year. Key is the right professional installation.