View From Above

This photo was taken from a plane and I’m not sure who took it, but I thought it was a neat shot of the lake. Right now the lake colour is more brown than usual – because of all the forest fires and the rain last week there’s been some erosion.

Fan Door Test

Air tightness is the third leg on this three-legged table. If you have a coffee table designed for three legs, what good is it if it only has two legs? If you have a Super Insulated House with a high efficient Heat Recovery Ventilation system, what good is it if it isn’t air tight? Not much!

The R2000 air tightness standard to meet is 1.5 air changes per hour at 50 pascals negative pressure. Any house meeting this standard is extremely air tight! I want this cottage to be extremely air tight and the only way to confirm this and find out where it isn’t is to do a “fan door test.”

Lucky for me I have a son who is a keener when it comes to draft proofing; in fact he is starting his own company which he is appropriately calling “Comfort Home Draft Proofing.” Okay, the nut didn’t fall too far from the tree… but it’s a good thing because his cost to me is so low I will be doing these fan door tests several times. We are at the critical stage where any leaks we discover can be corrected. Everyone building a home should be doing a fan door test at the drywall stage, to confirm that the house meets this standard.

This test will really separate builders who know what they are doing from those who don’t. You can see the sprayed foam and read all the data about the excellent properties. You can see the HRV with its duct runs and read the tested efficiencies at various outdoor temperatures – however you can’t see air tightness! You need to do a fan door test! In the photos you can see the fan door being set up and you can also see the vapour from the smoke pencil.

With the house under strong negative pressure even a very small pin hole air-leakage spot will show up when the smoke vapour moves. At this point Jordan will mark the leakage location and he will go back later with the foam and seal the leaks. When he has completed this remedial work he then restarts the fan and checks the area again to confirm that the air leak has been fixed. Once we know most of the leaks have been plugged he will do a final fan door test with all the house data put into the system/computer. At that point, I will let you know the empirical results. It’s been over 40-degrees Celsius most of the week so after working most of the day there is nothing like diving into a glacier fed lake to cool off.

Hey… this lake is supposed to be cold!