What’s a Blower Door Good For?

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Hint: It's the hole

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[](http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/building-science/what-s-blower-door-good)

[](http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/building-science/what-s-blower-door-good)

[In last week's blog](http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/building-science/air-leaks-happen-surface-not-volume), I suggested that talking about infiltration rates in terms of air changes per hour isn't an accurate way to portray air leakage. The problem is that you're dividing by volume but the leaks happen at the surface. I don't think ACHACH stands for Air Changes per Hour. This is a metric of house air tightness. ACH is often expressed as ACH50, which is the air changes per hour when the house is depressurized to -50 pascals during a blower door test. The term ACHn or NACH refers to "natural" air changes per hour, meaning the rate of air leakage without blower door pressurization or depressurization. While many in the building science community detest this term and its use (because there is no such thing as "normal" or "natural" air leakage; that changes all the time with weather and other conditions), ACHn or NACH is used by many in the residential HVAC industry for their system sizing calculations.50 is going away anytime soon, and I use it myself because everyone else does, even though it's biased toward larger houses.

URL: http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/building-science/what-s-blower-door-good