A Cold Climate Construction and Energy Blog
An energy audit is an inspection and analysis of how a building uses energy. To get an accurate analysis, tools are needed to perform testing. You would think that a blower door and thermal imaging camera would be my most commonly used tools during an audit, I do use them often, but there are a couple I used more. This posting is all about my energy auditing toolbox. Continue reading “Energy Audit-Tools of the Trade”
I think most of us know of this man, one of the founders of The Energy Conservatory and designers of the Minneapolis Blower Door. I recently had the opportunity to chat with Gary. My intent with the interview is a little different from other interviews that have featured Mr. Nelson. I wanted to ask questions from a practitioner working in the field point of view. Continue reading “Building Science-An Interview with Gary Nelson”
Whether you are using equipment from Minneapolis Blower Door, Retrotec, or any other blower door manufacturer, one of the first steps in conducting a blower door test is to measure the home’s floor area, volume, and surface area. Coming up with the floor area is the simplest, length times width. Calculating volume also isn’t hard, width times length time height, simple right? Not always, getting the volume of a geodome or a complex cathedral ceiling often takes some time. Continue reading “Energy Audit-Measuring for Blower Door Testing”
If you’re a nerd like me, chances are you’ve heard of WUFI. WUFI is a German acronym that basically translates to heat and moisture movements through a building assembly. This is called hygrothermal analysis, it predicts wetting and drying of an assembly and lets us know if that assembly is risky. Continue reading “Building Science-WUFI”
Balanced mechanical ventilation is code required in all new construction in my home state of Minnesota. Indoor air quality has become a big topic with today’s pandemic. My market uses HRV’s or heat recovery ventilators almost exclusively. They work great at supplying the home with filtered fresh air and at controlling indoor humidity levels. You can read more about HRV’s here. Continue reading “Construction Design-HRV or ERV”
A blower door is an expensive tool. A full kit including frame, panel, fan and manometer will cost more than $3500. Add in the other tools for finding air leaks and you could easily drop over $5000. And then you still need to have some training to understand how to operate and interpret the results. Continue reading “Energy Audit-Homemade Blower Door”
This week, I’m going to start a new category of subject matter to discuss, the tools I own and use when conducting energy audits, assessments and performing home diagnostic testing. We are going to start with my number one diagnostic tool, the blower door. Continue reading “Diagnostic Tools-Blower Doors”
Occasionally, when conducting energy audits and assessments, a customer will make a statement to the effect that they believe their windows are the main issue with why they are experiencing high energy costs. They are hoping to replace all their windows to lower the heating (or cooling) bills. Continue reading “Energy Audit-Really Good Windows”
I learned about a company called BRINC Building Products, Inc a couple years ago. They had developed a solution for how to attach windows when using exterior insulation. Normally we would build a wood buck to move the rough framing out to the plane of the exterior insulation. Continue reading “Construction Materials-ThermalTight”
I’ve talked about blower door testing several times on Green Building Advisor and on this blog. This discussion will dive deeper into blower door testing, when it should be completed, the different tests done with the blower door, and interpreting the information. Continue reading “Energy Audit-Blower Door Testing-A Deep Dive”