Blower Door Testing of Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) Homes

Marzena Kasia FYDRYCH1, Michael STREET1,2

1Department

of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave, 02139 Cambridge, United States.
mfydrych@mit.edu

OBJECTIVE

MOTIVATION
Infiltration of air through the building envelope is often a major variable
in a systems heating and cooling loads.
Air will flow through building elements such as walls, roofs, windows,
doors and bathroom and kitchen vents. The choice of wall materials,
windows and doors and the quality of construction affect the total
leakage area of the envelope. Air flow will depend on an envelopes
leakage area and the pressures generated by winds and buoyancy
forces associated with indoor-outdoor temperature differences. These
natural forces vary with building location.
ICF walls consist of a
solid, continuous and
seamless unit that
suggests tighter
construction than framed
walls.

Infiltration is very difficult

to predict and is better
estimated with housespecific air tightness tests.
Inadequate field tests have
been done to evaluate the
general potential for
reduced air infiltration of
ICF homes.
MIT in cooperation
with Concrete Industry
personnel has
scheduled air
tightness tests of 40
ICF houses across
the United States.

To date,15 blower door experiments have been carried out in:

Mississippi 10 houses
Florida 2 houses
Connecticut 2 houses
New Hampshire 1 house
House floor area has varied from 800 to 7300ft2

CONCRETE
SUSTAINABILITY
HUB

College ,Atlanta, GA

Construction Classification Based on Unit Leakage Area[4]

METHODOLOGY

Evaluate the air tightness of Insulated Concrete Form single-family

homes

2 Morehouse

BLOWER DOOR TEST

Leakage area normalized by exposed surface area is a useful

metric for evaluating air tightness, based on ASHRAE ratings.

Blower door tests have been

performed by certified home auditors
according to ASTM E1827-96[1] or
ASTM E779-03[2] using the
Minneapolis Blower Door with
TECTITE software.

Blower Door Methodology[3]

A powerful variable speed fan is
placed in an opening in the building
envelope
The air is blown into (pressurization)
or out of (depressurization) the building.

KEY FINDINGS

A uniform, artificial, static pressure is

imposed across the entire building
envelope and the amount of air being
moved by the fan to create this
pressure differential is determined.
The air flow rate through the fan is
usually determined from: a)
measurements of the pressure drop
across a known flow restriction, or b)
the fan rotational speed and a
calibration curve.

Test Data

Tightness of tested ICF houses varied from good to tight.

Mean air tightness was 0.016in2/ft2 (1.05cm2/m2)

IMPACT

Example Blower Door Data

Building Data
1782.5 ft2 floor area
14082.1 ft3 volume
3962 ft2 exposed surface

Calculations
Air Change per Hour

Flow at 4Pa

Measurement-based air tightness metrics indicate that ICF

houses are subject to lower amounts of uncontrolled
outdoor airflow than typical production housing.

Tighter construction facilitates the use of mechanical

ventilation with heat recovery for low-cost and lowenvironmental-impact building ventilation.

Air tightness measurements allow us to quantify energy use

and carbon emissions associated with air leakage for
houses in different climate regions using building energy
simulation programs.

REFERENCES

AL total leakage area of the building

[1] ASTM E1827-96 Determining Airtightness of Buildings Using an Orifice Blower Door
[2] ASTM E779-03 Standard Test Method for Determining Air Leakage Rate by Fan
Pressurization
[3] ASHRAE 438RP-92 Evaluation of the Techniques for the Measurement of Air Leakage of
Building Components, D.G.Colliver, W.E.Murphy, W.Sun
[4] ASHRAE Fundamentals - 2009

Building Leakage Curve

Airflow at 50 Pascals

Unit leakage area

(per ft2 of exposed surface)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been supported by the Concrete Sustainability
Hub at MIT, with sponsorship provided by the Portland
Cement Association (PCA) and the RMC Research &
Education Foundation.