A group of technicians proceeds with the transport and deployment of the Blower Door system at the testing site. The front door of the building is sealed using an aluminium frame and airtight fabric, where the fan is embedded. An exterior
pressure probe is connected to the fabric in order to messure external ambient data. Usually, it is neccesary to have acceso to the stair case of the building.
Inside the building, any opening which is not a window or an intentional ventilation system, such as shunts, is sealed using plastic foils fixed with tape, which can be removed after the test without leaving any trace. The rest of the
unintentional openings or faults are not sealed.
The control system consists of a frequency variator that modulates the air flow extracted by the fan and a data logger and controller which is responsible for maintaining the desired airflow rate and pressure differential.
The system is connected to a laptop, supplied by the technicians, with the necessary control software, which performs the entire procedure automatically. After taking a baseline pressure, the program operates the fan until the required
overpressure or depressure is reached, depending if the test is one of pressurization or depressurization; both are necessary to obtain the required indexes.
The control system automatically evaluates the air flow for various pressures, generally in intervals between 70 and 11 Pascals, by means of the Tectite software. The measuring process of these intervals lasts approximately 5 minutes and
it does not create any inconvenience for the user of the building.
The test is carried out several times, alternating the pressurization and depressurization modes, to fully characterize the behaviour of the infiltrations of the building. The total lenght of the test, including the envelope setup, the
measuring process and the collection of all the material takes approximately 2 hours.
While the Blower Door system performs the test, the technicians carry out an additional data collection test with a thermographic camera to identify specific faults and other phenomena in the building. In this way it is possible to visualize
the extent of these defects and detect their position.
The test produces an airflow and pressures graph and a meticulous characterization of the building and its envelope. The Tectite software processes this data to generate the necessary indexes to classify the behaviour of the infiltration
of the house.
An official certificate proving their participation in the infiles Project and the result obtained in the test is delivered later to the owner of the house.
