Blower doors can be used to accurately quantify and determine where draughts are in homes. Transition Bath owns a commercial blower door which can be borrowed if you would like to carry out draught-proofing work on your home. It comes with a very large fan which is fitted into an external door which is used to pressure or depressurise a home. Once running because of the volume air being moved by the fan (equivalent to a hurricane) it is very easy to find air leaks in your home. It can accurately measure air leakage for your home so you can find out how it compares with an average home
Blower doors, are basically large fans which you fit to a door of a property, they are used to pressurise and de-pressurise the air in the property and by measuring how much pressure is created for a given speed of fan you can determine quantitatively how leaky/draughty a property is. You can then go around and detect and fix air leaks in the envelope of your home, and remeasure the air permeability of the property to see how much you have reduced the leakage. It is probably more effective than using a thermal imaging camera to diagnose draughts, and has the benefit, unlike a thermal imaging camera that it can be used all year round, not just in the winter.
We believe we are the only community group in the UK operating such equipment. We would like to use it to research air permeability in existing properties – are area where research is lacking in order to work out the most cost effective was of draught-proofing homes.
If you are interested in borrowing the blower door or have any questions please contact us.