Stellar Building Performance recently completed blower door testing in Stuart for the builder of a new ten-home coastal community off St. Lucie Boulevard, in Martin County. The home tested at 1.15 ACH50, moving 351 CFM at a 50 Pascal pressure difference across a conditioned volume of 18,271 cubic feet.
A 1.15 ACH50 Result in Stuart
The test ran with a Retrotec Model 5000 fan and a SmartCloth panel in the front doorway, pulling the house to roughly 50 Pascals below the outdoor pressure. At that pressure the fan was moving about 350 CFM, which the Martin County envelope leakage test report records as 351 CFM50, and dividing that airflow by the home’s volume gives 1.15 ACH50.
ACH50 expresses the measured air leakage relative to the volume of the home, allowing the blower door result to account for differences in building size. Two houses can move very different amounts of air through the fan and still land on the same ACH50, which is why the ratio, not the raw airflow, is the number the energy documentation and the building department work from.
The number a home has to meet is not a universal one. Florida’s prescriptive path sets 7 ACH50 in Climate Zones 1 and 2, but a project documented on the performance path is held to the ACH50 value written into its own energy calculation. We always test against what the project’s documentation calls for. For more on how that plays out on a new build, see our Project Update on blower door testing in Fort Pierce.
If you have a project in Stuart that needs an envelope leakage test, you can request blower door testing in Stuart and we will get it on the schedule.
Tight Enough to Plan Ventilation Around in Stuart
A result near 1.15 ACH50 has a consequence beyond the number itself. Under the Florida Building Code, Energy Conservation, a dwelling unit that tests below three air changes per hour has to be provided with whole house mechanical ventilation, and the building department verifies it. Builders chasing a tight envelope are better off knowing that before the test than finding out at close out.
Ventilation and duct performance are tested separately from the envelope, and we handle both. If your Stuart project needs them, take a look at our duct leakage testing in Stuart.
A Ten-Home Coastal Community Off St. Lucie Boulevard
This is probably my favorite part of this particular Project Update. The home sits in a development coming to Stuart off St. Lucie Boulevard: ten units of coastal living in total. It is a three-story home with board-and-batten siding, a standing-seam metal roof over the attached garage, and a finish level that made it a genuinely great house to be inside. I was onsite for the test.
The first home in the community was built and tested under another testing organization. Stellar Building Performance is the testing partner for the remaining nine homes, and we are proud to be with this builder for the duration of the project. We are not stepping in for the last stretch; the large majority of the community’s testing is ours, and this home is part of that work.
Builders planning a multi-home community in Martin County and the surrounding counties can contact Stellar Building Performance to talk through testing across the whole schedule rather than one house at a time.
Setting Up the Blower Door in Stuart
The fan and panel go into an exterior doorway with the rest of the building set up for the test, and from outside the home looks the same as it would any other day. The photos below show the fan from the driveway side and from inside the home.
Testing Across Five Counties, Including Stuart
Stellar Building Performance provides blower door testing, duct leakage testing, mechanical ventilation testing, HERS Ratings and infrared imaging for builders, developers and homeowners across Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie, Martin and Okeechobee counties. You can see the full list on our service area page.
Have a home in Stuart that is ready for its envelope leakage test? Request blower door testing and we will take it from there.
Comments are closed