I just came back from testing a new build the Gents from Hardcore Renos are leading and it was a bittersweet experience I’ll carry with me for years. The sweetness came in the form of a really amazing test result from a couple of talented, caring blokes who are build a great house.
Manny and Anderson went into this build thinking they’d beat the performance of an ENERGYSTAR home, which sets the bar at 2.5 Air changes per hour (ACH50). Building Scientist use a number called the ACH50 to compare one home’s leakage to another. It means 50 Pascals of pressure are applied to a house using a fan and at this pressure the home’s conditioned air volume is changed over 2.5 times every hour for an ENERGY STAR home. Of course, these are exaggerated conditions, but its a test method for comparing leakage rates.
By the way, the building code doesn’t even care how leaky a new house is – there’s no testing requirement or minimum leakage threshold in the building code! Note if your house was built using a “Package”, your playing roulette on energy loss by air leakage.
Back to ENERGY STAR…2.5 ACH50 is considered “Best In Class.” In practice though, any house with a Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV) in stalled in it to take care of distributing new fresh air, one might as well go all the way and seal it up as air tight as you can in order to make the HRV earn its keep. So, when Manny and Anderson set out to build this house, they had the goal of 2.0ACH50 to beat ENERGY STAR by 20%.
In Europe, the German’s have set the bar for the most efficient home on the planet to have no more than 0.6ACH50 to meet certification. In order to produce a house that’s that tight requires a great deal of effort and attention to small details on behalf of the builder and today – I’m proud to say – Anderson and Manny produced a 0.75 ACH50 home. They beat their goal by over 60%!
Congrats Gents!
Manny and Anderson with all fingers intact.
My visit to the job site wasn’t all jubilation. See my number one fan had been staring down the end of his life; every test would leave him hot. Too hot. My Dad, the ever caring electrician called a few days ago to check in on him “How’s your fan? Did he burn out yet?”, we knew his days were numbered and so today, while hunting for leaks, my fan expired its last breath in the line of duty. Without saying a word – all went quiet and I knew my fan had bitten the dust.
My Dad checked it over but couldn’t find the source of the heat – we knew it was only a matter of time… RIP fan and thanks for the years of dedicated service and kicking the bucket AFTER the test was done.