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3398 Washington Road
Atlanta, GA 30344
USA
773.398.5288
corbett@buildingperformanceworkshop.com
Advanced residential construction and home improvement consulting and owner's advocacy in Atlanta, using the latest building performance diagnostic and modeling techniques and tools. Airtightness, insulation, HVAC, ventilation, moisture, and air quality and EMF consulting for homeowners and building professionals alike.
Home performance articles and stories from the field with internationally respected building forensics guru Corbett Lunsford at the Building Performance Workshop. Hear new episodes of the Building Performance Podcast, see new videos from the Home Performance YouTube channel, and learn all about how diagnostic testing (more than an 'Energy Audit') can make home improvement and new home construction a proven process!
Filtering by Category: Testing Tools
Corbett gets Atila Novoselac to share what the Test House is all about at the University of Texas at Austin. Delphine Farmer and Marina Vance show off the trailers surrounding it, and describe the instruments that'll be running 24/7 measuring the indoor chemistry of the Test House's air. https://HomeDiagnosis.tv/homechem
Corbett and Grace report from HOMEChem in Austin during the open house extravaganza.
Grace and Corbett report from the frontier of indoor air quality, HOMEChem (House Observations of Microbial and Environmental Chemistry). This is their crash course in the instruments that were assembled for this experiment, and the experience of having those millions of dollars of chemistry instruments take a long, hard smell of your offgassing.
Grace and Corbett tour the Center for Energy and Environmental Resources with THE TRAVELER of HOMEChem, Lea Hildebrandt-Ruiz. She shows off her atmospheric chemistry laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin, where she's been testing the harmful effects of pollution on tiny pieces of people!
Corbett freaked out about particles from mosquito repellant and spray sunscreen, especially for his 3-month old little girl. Luckily, he has two of the world's top indoor chemistry experts to advise him and Grace.
Welcome to HOMEChem's last Festivity-Associated Kitchen Emissions Study (FAKESgiving) complete with turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce cooked like you'd drive a submarine. As House Observations of Microbial and Environmental Chemistry wraps up, we're digging deeper and deeper into how our cooking, cleaning, and hanging out habits affect the air we breathe in homes.
Body Splash or Body Sprays- these teen-loving products carry more than what is listed on the bottle. What is lingering afterwards and what is the chemistry looking like as the school day ends?
Grace and Corbett brain dump on the last day of HOMEChem, as researchers swab the Test House's surfaces for microbe samples.
Meet some of the heroes of HOMEChem (House Observations of Microbial and Environmental Chemistry) and the University of Texas-Austin's Test House! Subscribe and stay tuned for more about this first-ever groundbreaking experiment that will change how all of us see our homes.
Corbett checks the flue gas temperature, contaminant makeup, and efficiency of the tankless water heater in the #TinyLab with a new Wohler A450. Learn more and order this tool at: https://www.trutechtools.com/WohlerA450
Corbett presented for Broan-Nutone and Fantech at the International Builders Show (IBS) 2018 in Orlando, and in case you weren't there, here it is! Learn all about why builders, manufacturers, contractors, insulators, HVAC techs, and others in the construction industry are starting to care about, and act upon, the metrics that come from home performance testing.
Thanks as always to the sponsors who are leading the charge in making measured performance mainstream with 'Home Diagnosis' coming to TV screens soon!
See how Corbett teaches home performance to the uninitiated after having given this presentation 214 times across the U.S. on the Proof Is Possible Tour. Special thanks to the tool companies and all other sponsors of the upcoming TV series 'Home Diagnosis' who have invested in making home performance a mainstream topic:
Corbett performs a blower door test on LG Squared Architecture's #OffGridHomestead. Will Chris's toolshed beat the record set by the #DryVault? Will Passive House standards be outperformed? Will Corbett remember to plug in all his hoses?
Good day Corbett,
I wanted to let you know, that I really enjoy your approach to the whole building science and your building performance workshop website. I am relatively new as a Resnet Rater and the county where I live is Collier County in Florida.
They recently adopted the new code standard set by the state. My question relates to multifamily condo units. I have a client that did renovations to a 2,500 sq. ft. penthouse condo and the front door to the unit is I a common area. The county wants them to perform a blower door test in order to obtain their certificate of occupancy.
I realize this would be a compartmentalize test, since I can only have access to the unit they renovated for their client. Knowing that I will encounter not only leakage to outside but also internal leakage between units. I was wondering what the best approach would be to ensure a successful test. Collier County requires between 3 ach and 7 ach for a test to pass code.
Any information would be appreciated. Thanking you in advance.
Best Regards,
Norm Giguere
www.blowerdoorenergyexperts.com
Dear Norm-
Thanks for your question, it's a good one! First off, you should be fine if they did a good job with the renovations- 7 ACH50 is not terribly hard to achieve.
When you set up your blower door at the front door of the condo, you'll blow air out into the common hallway, so you want to make sure all possible windows/doors in that hallway are open to the outdoors. Use the emergency exits if necessary (make sure maintenance knows what you're up to).
You'll be testing the condo's leakage to everything outside of it, including the downstairs unit, but that's intended. They really will have air leaking between the two condos, if there are leakage pathways, and you want to be testing for that and including it in your blower door test result.
Ask your code official if they want the result to pass the residential code or commercial code, because you have to test at 75 Pa in commercial. I always advise doing a multipoint test (get the flows on at least two pressures, like 25 Pa and 50 Pa) so you can extrapolate the 75 Pa if anyone ever wants it in the future. Saves you a trip.
AS AN ADDED BONUS, consider doing a Zonal Pressure Test on the unit downstairs, to see how much the blower door is affecting it. Always nice to have more data than you need.
Happy Testing,
Corbett
Grace and Corbett built the world's highest performance tiny house on wheels in 2016. It was perfect. Then they toured it 13,000 miles across America and let 7,000 people come inside to feel, hear, and smell what perfectly tuned home performance is like.
What's the house performing like now, after all that torture? And under 2 inches of snow in Atlanta, Georgia? See for yourself in this 20-minute tour, complete with testing, demonstrations, and metrics that show Proof Is Possible, even for people who have never built a house before. The #TinyLab is still the undisputed most scientifically superior home performance demonstration in the world, and we sincerely hope others start challenging our work!
I'd love to show you this, but my client has asked that I take this video down while they try to reconcile with the installer. Fingers crossed everybody, and sorry to be a tease.
Corbett likes tools that are sexy and scary at the same time. This flow hood is both. Measure CFM, Drybulb, Wetbulb, Dewpoint, Velocity, and more with this very affordable tool that will help revolutionize the HVAC industry.
Corbett breaks down the pros, cons, and best uses for six infrared thermal cameras: Flir ONE, C2, and MR160, ThermApp, Fluke TiR110, and Flir T660. All of these can be seen at https://TruTechTools.com