Australian Passive Solar Home

For our passive solar house in the build north of Canberra, I’ve upgraded my blower door testing so that I can achieve a pressure of -150Pa in the room under test. That’s three times the pressure of normal blower door testing. I have to be a little careful, as that also means a force of 15kgf/m2…. and I don’t want to pull the ceiling down!

It’s not usual to blower test individual rooms but it has three advantages.

(1) It’s easier to generate the lower pressure and so better find leaks.

(2) As the house will be operated with thermal zoning (i.e. different temps in different rooms), you don’t want lots of internal air leaks.

(3) At least some rooms, e.g. my home office, will probably be operated at times as individual passive solar rooms within the larger house, so again you don’t want lots of leakage.

The blower door testing is proving to be much more interesting than I expected!

So far, it also hasn’t cost me anything – the XPS panels are left over from the slab edge insulation; the fan I usually have in my shed to vent welding fumes; the Magnehelic gauge I have for car aero testing; and a handheld anemometer I have… just because I like measuring instruments.

And the results? So far, the biggest leaks have been through unplugged power points!