It’s natural for people to look for cheaper ways to do things. In the case of air tightness testing, what may seem like a cheaper and seemingly more economical way of testing has many more strings attached. This can be used to help builders, ESD consultants or interested technically minded people to understand the complications of moving away from a whole a building test to reduce cost.

When we consider air tightness testing to be done for whatever the reason, the first question we need to be asking ourselves is “What is the aim and purpose of this testing?”

Are we testing to understand the overall permeability of the building envelope?
Or are we testing to understand the quality of the installation of the facade compared to factory facade testing, or to understand how much the core and facade leaks?

Testing and sealing one part, or compartment, of a building, can be counter-productive. As the building has many different components and other areas might include elevator shafts, different ductwork, external doors, or a leaky roof section, just testing one part will not tell the complete story of the whole building. Sealing one compartment will often result in unbalanced mechanical systems and poor air quality in other parts. In other words, you cannot just change the spark plugs and ignore the rest of the engine and still expect optimal performance.

In this video we talk about these commercial airtightness testing concepts:

Compartment blower door testing
Guarded compartment blower door testing
Whole building blower door testing

Enjoy