This video is brought to you by Sporland. Quality, integrity and tradition. All right today. I've got the Minneapolis blower door setup from the energy Conservatory Um, we're getting ready to do a depressurization test on my house. We're going to do a bunch of tests, but we're going to start with the depressurization test now. I ran a reference tube outside. it's curled away from the house so that way it's not going to be affected by the fan movement. And the cool thing is they have a app that basically tells you how to set everything up. So we're going to go to Tubing Assistant. We're going to go to Building Tightness. We're going to go to depressurize. The gauge is inside the building. We are using a Model 3 110 fan. It's asking me to confirm my selections. That's all correct. So I hit continue. and then now it's telling me the Green Tube which I'm not using green I'm using clear but that's fine. That's my reference tube. the outside that goes to the the this port on channel A and then the red tube goes to the fan right here and that goes to this port on channel B. So I'm going to do that real quick. All right. I'm going to stop the video for a minute. If you haven't seen the first video in my home. HVAC Renovation project. do me a favor. There should be, uh, for those watching on a computer, there should be a card popping up right in the top of the screen. Right now you guys can click on that, that's the first link. If not, just search my channel for the home HVAC replacement and you'll see the whole beginning of the series when I walk through my house but understand something I am not an energy auditor. Okay, I'm not a person that is very familiar using the tools that I'm using in this video. I've been working with them for a couple weeks kind of playing with them in my off time during my normal you know, slow time and I'm getting more and more familiar. But the whole concept here is that this video series is going to show how someone with my knowledge which is very, very limited in the building science side, can make their way through testing their own home and eventually leading to the replacement of my air conditioner. Okay, so I'm using tools from the energy Conservatory in this video the Minneapolis blower door, their duct Blaster their smoke puffer we're using uh yeah, I think that's it. the Dg8 gauge, the Dg1000 gauge and it's really, really interesting to see how intuitive they are because and I did struggle with a few things and a few of the tests. And to be fair too, I've also been getting help from the Energy Conservatory They let me get a hold of them and ask them questions when I'm trying to learn things. So that's just. you know some some context for what you guys are going to see in this video and please understand in no way Am I an expert. Okay, let's get back to the video. All right. we're all hooked up like it says, so we're going to go ahead and proceed and it's gonna take us. It launches the gauge configuration and then now though what I'm going to do is I'm actually gonna take over inside the auto test app. So I'm going to pull up the auto test app now. All right, we're getting ready to run the test right now Again, we're using the auto test app so we've got everything all set up. We've got the house as we use it. So I've got the garage door open which you know I know we shouldn't be but that's I want to know what the numbers are the way that we have been using the house. Okay so configuration is not open fan configuration as ring A okay and uh yeah everything else is ready So we're gonna hit start test. It's going to ask us some questions it is 71 degrees in my house, it is 51 degrees outside side and I'm going to hit continue. Let's go ahead and do a baseline test real quick. So it says cover the fan so we'll cover the fan clip this on so it can get its Baseline reading. Okay fan is covered. go ahead and hit continue. So it's doing a baseline, it's timing to let us know when it's going to be done. As soon as it does that, it's testing. it's referencing to outside to see. Okay, now it has a baseline. Uncover the fan to continue and we're going to uncover it to ring A. This isn't my first rodeo here. Probably re-shot this clip a million different times because I realize I keep messing everything up. That's what happens when you don't know what you're doing and you're learning as you go. right? All right? So there's that. Ring A Here we go and it's going to run a multi-point test at different targets. Negative: 60 Negative 48 all the way down the line. So let's let it run its test and see what happens. Cannot reach Target pressure for current configuration and fan at maximum speed. Remove ring and press, continue. So because of the air leakage, it can't reach it. so we need to go ahead and remove this ring. There we go. All right. So now we're completely open and let's go ahead and follow on the test. Continue Open fan. So we're going to let it keep going. It's definitely reaching it now now. I'm curious if it's going to have me put the different rings on the fan as it goes down to the different tests. I Guess it doesn't have to it, can It can run with the open fan right? flow. Too small to measure on up. So there we go. Install Ring A. Okay, so we're gonna go ahead and install ring A again. So this is pretty cool because it goes through the auto test feature and kind of does the math for you. but for someone like me, that's kind of an idiot. You can still screw things up so definitely is a testament that you, uh, need to know what you're doing when you're doing this. Okay So we've changed it to ring A Continue so it's pretty much going to go through the rest of it. I'll go ahead and save you guys the the headache of watching this entire thing and I'll turn the clip on if anything else interesting happens or when the test is done all right. We got down to the last one and it needs me to put another ring on so it says ring B so we'll go ahead and do that real quick again to get at the smallest measurement so we'll put that on real quick. It's really not that difficult to do these rings so that's a plus. Super easy. So come over here, look at my buddies like hey, what are you doing Dad All right. So we hit continue. We're on ring B and it'll run the final test. It's where we have an animal farm in here now. I Got a cat too. Everybody wants to know what's up and the dog wants to know what's up with the cat's butt. Hey, what's going on there Bud? let me sniff your butt. Dogs annoying but I Love them right? Test complete. Okay, so shows you how easy it is. So see what we got here? All right. So it gives you a full test report that you can review after. So let's see what we got going on here. Let's see if I can understand this. Uh, everything's on there. Measured leakage 2205 at Cfm50, so that is my test in number 2205. now what we're going to do is we're going to run the test in a few different ways. Okay, I'm gonna go around the house and I'm going to seal off all the big holes that I know of the holes in my bedroom, we're going to close the window and the the bathroom. and then we're going to run the test in multiple different ways, eliminating air leaks. and then we're going to go in and we're going to air seal receptacles and outlets. and well, before we air seal them, maybe we'll go through and test them right with a smoke puffer and show you guys because I know there's leakage and that's the other thing here too. I Know where majority of the leakage is going to be in this house? Okay, majority of the leakage in my opinion is going to be at the can lights. We've got 27 28 can lights in the house and I know those things are going to be leaking I have a very big hunch at least I know that all the outlets and receptacles are leaking because there's climbing around in my attic. There's a lot of holes on the top plate where wires are running through. We know that. so we're going to go through and start eliminating things. The first thing I'm going to do like I said is eliminate all the holes and then I'm going to come over here and I'm going to close the garage door right because this is how we leave it right with all our stuff in my RC car and the cats. This is like the cat room so we're going to, uh, have to learn how to keep this door shut which is a whole new thing right? So so we'll keep that shut and we'll go around the house and seal everything else up All right. I'm getting ready to run the next test and what I'm doing is like I said I'm taping these holes off because I'm gonna have a drywall guy come in and Patch this hole and then all my holes in the master bedroom which forgive my mess. All right. Um, so then we we patch these holes right there and then I have some holes up there. We patched them again. I'm gonna have a drywall guy fix those but I'm eliminating those from the picture so we can get the blower door number down and we're working our way through the process. Also, close the bathroom window and then you see my creative way of getting this door to stay shut without having to have someone hold it is just shove a paint brush in there because the door just keeps popping open. Look at that. It pulled open my mechanical closet too. now that I taped off all the holes. I ran a new blower door test. Okay, and you can see that we improved significantly down to 15.49 Okay, 15.49 was our air leakage. So that was if I have someone come in and uh, test the I'm sorry, uh, patch all the holes and everything. Now is where we get into the Nitty Gritty because we need to start sealing up different places in the house. Okay, we need to run the smoke puffer around and I'll show you guys some clips of me running the smoke puffer. Okay, and then getting ideas of places that we have air leakage. Now one of the major leaks that I know of is this door. Okay, and it's because of the combustion air vents into my closet right here. I Mean the door literally jams open right and you see we have a huge combustion air vent which makes this massively connected to the attic. Okay, and then we have a combustion air vent back down in here too. So my next question would be what happens if I tape off this door because I'm more than likely going to be going in with a heat pump and if I go in with a heat pump, I will eliminate all these combustion air vents, they will be gone. This cabinet will then become a hundred percent part of the house and should not be connected to the attic. And when I say connected I mean there's a direct path to the Attic So This Is Now connected to the outside by a rather large percentage. Okay, very, very large percentage. So again, when I put a heat pump in here, we'll seal those off and this will then become connected to the house more and a lot less, if not all the way disconnected from the outside. and then I won't even have to worry about sealing this up once I do that. So so my next step is going to be to go ahead and close this door and I'm going to seal this off right here. Just completely seal it off with tape as if as if it was no longer connected. and I want to see what that number is? I Know this may not be as interesting for other people, but for me, this is very intriguing. Okay, I Know that my house is not being used correctly I Know that leaving my garage door open was bad. I'm not an idiot, but it's just one of those things. you get used to it, right? You get stuck in tunnel vision and whatever and you're just doing your thing and you don't really pay much attention to it. Okay, so by simply closing my garage door, my air leakage at 50 Pascals dropped 653 Cfms of air leakage into the house. Okay, then by taping my mechanical closet door shut, it dropped 133 Cfms 133.7 Wow, That is really interesting. now. What? I Want to know before I even do any air sealing I Want to know how bad my ducts are leaking? So let's do a blower door test with the duct leakage taken out of the picture. So I'm gonna go tape all the registers. we're going to tape them and then we'll also set up the duck Blaster and we'll do a test with the duct Blaster to see how much actual leakage the ducks have. So I'm going to get all that equipment out I Got the duck Blaster Right there. we're going to get it all set up and we're going to do a blower door test. Then we'll do a duck leakage test. Then we'll do a duck leakage test the outside referencing trying to figure out how much of our duct leakage is in the space. Right? Because we will have duck leakage at the return air cabinet. We will have it there and we will have duck leakage. Um, in the Attic in the supply vents too. So we got to figure that out. This is really interesting. Okay, my experience doing the tape on these registers is that it's a pain in the butt. it is. So we got this duck mask which comes in these giant rolls. This one's from the Energy Conservatory and it's just from the looks of its sticky tape that won't peel paint off is what it feels like to me. So you gotta seal it around the register to the wall and I'm sure there's experience energy Auditors that are screaming at me for doing this wrong, but it's a pain in the butt. So I sealed it to the wall and then go and seal it to the register. and my experience with it is that this alone is not enough and you have to tape it because if you don't it just sucks off because I'm going to run the house in a negative air pressure right now with the blower door and it'll just pull this stuff off now. I Imagine that if you're doing duct testing if you want, you could depressurize the ducts. so that way it's not pulling the stuff off the wall. But right now I'm doing a house depressurization so these things are going to want to peel off. So I'm just taping the edges to themselves. where the tape. That way it's holding everything together just on the edges. Nice and good, nice and sealed. It's time to, uh, run the blower door test. Now it's like Flash Forward 20 minutes. We've got all the Ducks taped off all around the house. Um, and this is what we came up with: 12 11 at Cfm50. So 204 CFM drop is what it is um of duck leakage. but that's at 50 pascals. So what I want to do is actually a test at 25 pascals. I'm curious to see how close the blower door number is to the duct Blaster number because the duck Blaster is going to depressurize the 25 pascals. So um, oh wait, no, we can't do that. Actually, that won't make sense because no I would have to leave the Ducks off and do a test. I mean the the register mask off because yeah, no, that wouldn't make sense What I would have had to have done was done this test right here at 25 Pascals also and this test at 25 pascals. So with the duct mask off and then with the duct mask on at 25 Pascals then I could have gotten an accurate number. But yeah, that's not going to make sense and I'm not going to do that test just for the heck of it. So now what we're going to do is we're going to get the duck Blaster out. I'm going to assemble it. We're going to leave the Ducks Mast off. I'm going to tape the duck Blaster to the return over here and then we're going to test the actual ducts by themselves with everything off. I'm sorry, you know to see what our actual leakage is. So at Cfm50, um, it's approximately 204 or at 50 Pascals, it's approximately 204 CFM But I'm curious what it is with the actual duck Bluster um and the duck Blaster 2. Another thing that I'm curious about. Well, I'll go and do the test and then I'll talk about some Curiosities that I have in order to do the duck Blaster I Just left the mask, duck mask on and just cut the square around. so that way it's open, it's nice and dirty. Uh, left that on and then taped like that to the existing stuff. so nice and good. and then now I'll hook this guy up and it has like a velcro strap on it to tighten it around it. Thank you thank you thank you! Foreign. All right the duck Blaster is set up. Got the reference tube in the supply duct. everything's hooked up. We're ready to go. I Took nice use of my cat condo here. so again we're going to do an auto test. We have it all set up. We're going to pressurize 25 pascals. so uh, we're basically going to hit let me hit stop test because I messed up Stop test I Forgot to turn the thing on so we're going to turn it on so we're all connected. We have an Open fan start test Open fan. We're going to start with that and see what it does. Okay, so now it's just running its own test. It's doing the math for me. Pressurizing You can see the duct is expanding. We'll see what happens and it stopped. What is it telling me? Uh, flow too small. the measure for current configuration I Have to install ring one. So I'm going to install ring one now. got ring one installed, then I installed the little extra piece of the gasketing material so it seals all the way through all the way. Good and we're going to restart this test and see what it has to say. Continue and let's see if it actually pressurized to where it wants to now. So variable speed, slowly ramping up everything the same. and now, yeah. it looks like we're meeting our Target right now, so it's taking our reading right now now. I ran a test a Title 24 test which is just a energy code requirement in the state of California I Just use that one just because it already had the data in it. but basically uh, 215. So it's saying that I failed because it has a basic Target already which I know I was going to fail. But if we look down here, 215.6 is my duct leakage. So now I want to test duct leakage to outside to see how much that leakage is in the Attic how much of it you know where it's coming from and I'm curious to see if that 215.6 stays the same or if it shows that I have duck leakage elsewhere besides just in the Attic All right, And this is my total duck leakage to outside test. Okay, because I wanted to find out where the majority of my duct leakage is, but in all reality, the majority of my duck leakage I know is going to be outside because my mechanical closet is connected to the attic which is open to the outside and it's vented. So there's a possibility that you could have slight leakage at the supply grilles and return grills. but I haven't completely taped off. So in all reality, we're not going to have any duct leakage to outside in my head. Okay, so we're set to cruise at zero Pascals on the duck Blaster and we're registering 200 Cfms of duct leakage. Okay, and then over here, we're pressurizing the house to 25 Pascals right there. And that's right, what we had before. So my duck leakage total deck leakage was 215.6 approximately. So we're right on the money. Maybe just a little bit of leakage somewhere rare, you know? I don't know where, but that's it. So we have tested the duct leakage. we know we have 200 Cfms of leakage to the attic. All right with the blower door running if we simply just take a smoke puffer and this one's from the energy Conservatory We can see the amount like just look at how the smoke is just blasting away from that switch, right? and then let's go up here and let's look at this can light. So I come up onto the can light and it's all just blowing away. So we know that we have serious leakage. now. a lot of the leakage in the home is pretty like predictable. I Come right here. come to the side. side. perspectives are always better because then you can actually see that the smoke is just shooting away so it's pretty. Common Sense kind of I guess is the right word I Don't know that I'm gonna go around sealing up all the can lights. we're gonna get special covers for the can lights for in the Attic We're going to seal those up, foam them down, and then we're going to go around to all the receptacles and all the light switches and we're going to seal those up. and then depending on how far I go with this, we might even, uh, start pulling the insulation out of the attic and sealing up the the attic itself. like sealing up where the the wall joists meet in the top and penetrations going down and different stuff like that. But it's pretty crazy. all the infiltration we have coming through this house. So I was just thinking about something. so blower door and everything's off in my house. my family's actually still asleep. They're probably getting annoyed with me making this noise talking to my camera right now. but like I mentioned in my first video, we run the fan at night time. That's how everybody sleeps. They get used to that noise, right? But I started thinking about something and this is going to be Amplified because this closet has a massive amount of air leakage, right? and the combustion air vent up there is pulling air in from the attic. But check this out! So I got the smoke. Puffer look at all the smoke is just drawing into the furnace cabinet. It's all pulling right down in. so it starts to make me wonder how much of the attic air in my cooling. So I got to figure out how I can measure that because I'm curious. You know we're pulling air through here right? but this is undersized. We know that's why it's so loud. Look at my dog Luke he's like what's up, dude. So we know that the return is undersized for a four ton, right? So that's putting a bigger negative air pressure on the furnace cabinet, right? And we're pulling outside air into the utility closet. So I'm trying to figure out what's a way that I can quantify the number of Cfms that I'm actually pulling in of outside air and not the house air. So the interesting thing is is that when I close this door, we're putting more well. I guess I'd have to get a manometer out. but I imagine we're putting more of a negative air pressure right? and we're probably drawing more air in. So let's see. let's see if this. Oh see, that's not really pulling too much in because I don't think it needs to because it's got all you know. it's not putting much of a pole on the door because it's got so much, um, air from that combustion air vent. And it's not necessarily putting this cabinet on a negative air pressure because it has plenty of air. but how much of that air is coming in and drawing in through here? you can clearly see it's just sucking that air. see the smoke just drying in so it's not sealed to the floor. This is not sealed very well. That's a very interesting number right there. I Have to figure out how to quantify that. so it's how it's typical and how it works. But I'm going around the house and I'm kind of sealing up some receptacles, some switch plates, finding the penetrations in the back. now I realize when I get up to the top and I see all the top plates, that's going to help. but I figure you know you might as well seal this stuff up I have gaskets for all the receptacles and everything and switches. I come over here and I'm just sealing up some holes because before I moved in, there's a coax cable running out the wall running on the outside of the house so cut that off, sealed it up and I'm just going around sealing up all the penetrations that I can get to again, you know I'm not going to leave it like that. I'm letting it dry, then I'll cut it off I'm just being careful and then sealing up everything there. And got the gas caulk for the fireplace right here. so I'm going to seal up around that. so I'm sure that you know some of this might be a little bit of wasted time. Okay, next thing I want to address is the fact that I am not spray foaming the switch into the box. Okay, if you look carefully, all I did was just put a little bit of spray foam around the edges where the Box isn't sealed to the wall and then I went back into the back and put spray foam where the Romex Wire comes through. you can see just in there. but I didn't fill the entire box and then I just put just a dab right here because there's a knockout in the bottom of each box so we can still get in there. We can still pull all the wire out, we can still pull the switch out right. and I realized that once I seal the top plates in my attic, part of this air ceiling right here is gonna be mute, right? It's not going to make a huge difference, but here's my logic: I know because we are on a foundation that there's air leaks under the foundation. so I'm sealing up everything I can get to I Don't think I'm going to pull the baseboards but I know that if I pulled the baseboards I'd be able to make some progress too. But I'm just sealing up everything I can and then we'll seal the top plates too. We'll get up in the top and we'll seal the top plates. But I figure that if we seal the top plates and we seal up these, we're going to reduce the amount of air coming in right. It's not going to be perfect. We're going around and I'm going to get uh, the top hat covers for the cam lights I'm not going to show you every single one, but I'm going through and I'm doing every single receptacle. I've done the whole front of my house I'm now getting into the hallway in the bedroom so it's a long process and I know I'm a Nut when I do things so I'm going a little overboard, but it's just how I roll then I'm putting these switch plate gaskets and again, these aren't perfect right? But I put switch plate gasket and then I'll put the switch plate back on right and we're just slowing down the air again. I Know we're not going to seal every air leak in the house, but we're just trying to reduce it all right. We're up in the attic right now. we're going to be doing can light covers. So I have these rock wool insulated can light covers. Um, and we'll discuss my feelings on these after I'm done with this I've already done seven of them last weekend. They're a pain in the butt, but we'll talk more about it. Okay, so right now I like I'm the kind of person that likes to do the difficult stuff first because then the easy stuff is, you know, a cakewalk. So all the way on the other side of my attic is a vaulted ceiling over my living room. I have seven can lights I did those last weekend. What a pain! So today I'm gonna get the other end of my Vault over my front entry room which is right here which isn't as difficult to get to. We're gonna do four can lights over there. Once we get those done, then we'll come into here. and I have a bedroom here. there's four. I have a bedroom here. there's four and then I have my studio right here. there's another four so we'll do those and then. so what is that? Four eight, twelve? I Feel like there's more too I Feel like I'm missing some but anyways, we've got a bunch. so I've got all my stuff, got my foam, got a couple tools, different things inside the bag so you guys can't really see me too well. but I got to get all uh, masked up respirator on and stuff so that way I can breathe all right. Here's one of my can lights and you can see that there was a point in time when I had a mouse problem because we got little mouse droppings everywhere and I've been finding mouse traps up here that got left behind. We solved the problem, but we did have it for an issue or for a while now. Um, but anyways, pulled back the bat insulation. We've got one of the can lights right here. We've got the the rock wool cover. My understanding is is that these are pretty much fire proof. Um, we run LEDs in my can lights. they don't get hot. um so we should be good to go. Uh, all right. so we're gonna go through the process that I've figured out how to do this. I'm not an expert at all but trying to air seal this up. One thing I will say that I figured out and I gotta go back and correct it is. You got to make sure these little stupid Tabs are pulled out really tight. pulling the can light up because when the bat insulation sits on top of these things, it actually kind of weighs them down and pushes the can lights down. They're not like a great seal so it doesn't necessarily look like the best thing in the world. but this is the best way that I could think to get these covers to kind of seal down and you hope that the spray foam fills up the gaps. We'll find out I Don't think it's going to be completely airtight, but I think it's going to reduce the amount of air infiltration. That's the idea at least. I don't know. You know. Again, you guys are probably screaming at me telling me I'm completely wrong and doing this like an idiot I mean the idea of these covers is decent and if you can get them to fit, you know flat against the drywall, imagine it's the best the using the spray foam, which is kind of what I read is the easiest way. but I find that I you know it doesn't seem like I have a hard time trusting that it's going to be completely airtight, which I know it won't be. but I think it's going to reduce the infiltration significantly. Um, we'll talk. in the closing words of: I'm halfway through this so I'm committed and I already bought a crap ton of these. So I'm going to keep going. but I have some ideas how I could have better done this instead of doing this because this is a lot of work and on top of that, I'm still going to come in here and have someone pull out all the insulation. So I'm questioning why I'm even doing this right now I think I'm doing it just for the blower door number just to see my my Improvement but I'm going to eventually. Well, I'm gonna get prices on having someone come in rip out all this bad insulation, help me to air seal the top plates and you know all that stuff. So, but that's a whole nother conversation. so it is so much easier to do this when you're not on a vault. Oh my gosh, so it's my process again. I'm sure you guys are screaming at me, but this is how I'm rolling just like this all the way around and then do the seam. So keep going at this point I Want to actually measure airflow on this unit instead of using the estimated airflow that I originally did in my first report? So what we're going to do is we're going to take a few, uh, pressure measurements and we're going to install the energy conservatories to a true flow grid. But we're going to use Measure Quick so we're going to select it on here. The app's already opened. Run test for measure quick. Um, let's see. we've got a furnace. Uh, we're just answering the questions we're in upflow. So what this is doing is actually running you through the Energy Conservatory's app. It's just linking it to measure quick. So the Energy Conservatory's app does all this for you too. but it auto populates like cooling capacity. It's four tons it says right there and then return air temperature 69 degrees because it's using the actual probes. So I got my return right there. you can see. So um, we're already good on that. Let's go ahead and hit. Oh wait, we gotta do. uh. air filter location. Now my air filter is located inside there. so we're going to call that a filter slot in the duct or cabinet. and then we're going to hit next close any humidifiers. We don't have any of that. All right. Uh, return air ducts. So now it needs pressure inches of water column at return air now. I Happen to have the Dg8 right here and it's set right there. So we're going to go ahead and take that measurement. now. Once we've taken that measurement, it's going to prompt us through all the other measurements after filter. So I'm just simply going to take this guy out, put it right here after filter. we'll go ahead and take the next measurement and then just work our way through the workflow. Okay, before evap coil and I've already got holes drilled out for everything. So before evap coil, go ahead and pull this guy out. I've got a hole right here there. We go ahead and take that measurement. You can see this unit has massive total external static across it. It's pretty bad it's over an inch. And then supply duct. Okay, so now supply duct. Come on up here on top of the coil. So I could just put it right. Got a hole right there if I can get it in there. There We go there, we go. good to go and then we'll just go ahead and hit take measurement. Pretty easy workflow you got going on here. Now the next step is going to be that I actually have to remove the filter and put the true flow in. Okay, so we're going to go ahead and hit, continue and it just basically tells you: leave the pressure probe in the supply plenum, remove the air filter, put the true flow in. So I got to get in there and do that now. All right. Pulled out my existing air filter now I got the true flow in there, but now we got to secure it down which is the tricky part. So I'm going to attempt to do some taping and then I'll probably have to put some heavy objects on there because the tape's probably not going to stick too too amazingly. Well, all right, it's going to be a little hokey, but I I put down painters tape before me that way I had something good to stick this tape to and then taped the whole filter down or true flow down now. I also have my little C clamp back there, not on any of the pressure ports, but just holding the weight of the back because I know that this thing's gonna pull up so I can also see it from in my uh return air. Grille So I can look in there and see if it's pulling up Once it starts running all right, everything started back up and I'm able to look up underneath. you guys won't be able to see it and I'm 100 sure that the true flow is not being pulled up or anything. Okay, so now it's given us, uh, airflow. So we're going to go ahead and hit take measurement it's measuring and then we'll have our airflow number inputted into measure quick and it'll be from the true flow grid so we know it's not an estimation whatsoever. So now we've got our airflow measurement inputted into measure quick. All right. I Have to say I'm very uh, disappointed in the final result. I'm happy with the blower door number but I'm disappointed. Okay, so I went around and I sealed up I showed you guys little clips of the outlets I sealed up a couple holes in the walls um like with spray foam and then I got up and I did these can light covers and I took these rock wool can light covers sealed into the can lights and my final blower door number and this is what we're going to use for our load calculation is 11 32 Okay, that is our final blower door number but when you look at the results, Okay, so initially how we use the house we had 2205 when I shut the doors and taped off the holes on the walls that you guys saw I dropped my blower door number 656 CFM Okay then I went around and uh, what is that taped the registers? No taped the uh, the utility closet door tape the utility closet door. then I dropped at 134, then I taped the registers, then I dropped it 204 Cfms taping all the registers so that was the duct leakage. Then I sealed up all the outlets and the can light covers and I only got 79 CFM If I had to say after all that craziness and I may still even change this. to be honest with you, these things were the dumbest investment. I spent a crap ton of money on these, it was either 500 or 800 I can't remember either one one of those two numbers is stupid expensive and in all honesty, after it's all said and done, the two days worth of work that I had to do putting these things on, climbing in the Attic sweating like crazy, climbing all the way through getting all the way on these vaulted ceilings, having the can lights protrude down. oh my gosh, this is ridiculous. Let me come over here and show you so I'll turn this off so you guys can see this. So after doing this, the can lights what I found is that when I sealed them down, it like pushed the can light down. Look at this look right here. look at they're like pushing down and when I try to push on it, it doesn't go up. So that means that the spray foam and everything and the cam light covers pushing down on the housing. So now I got to get back up there and go through all of that and it just seemed like a massive waste of time doing those rock wall can light covers for like the 27 or however many can lights I had the stupid number. That's ridiculous in hindsight. they make a uh, an insert that goes in these can lights. It twists in with a light bulb socket and then you it to the roof I should have just done those I honestly might even still just do those and throw away this money because I bet you anything I just feel like I will get a lot better on my blower door number if I seal those up a little bit better, but who knows. Regardless, this is the blower door number 1132.9 That is what we're going to use and we're going to go ahead and run the load calculation on the house, find out what size, and start designing the duct work. Start thinking about picking equipment. boy, that was a lot of work though. like for that. Again, these numbers are great, right? Learning to shut the door, taping off my holes which I am going to get them drywalled and fixed and mind you too, I'm not going to fix those right now because there's a very good possibility in some of the rooms we might have to cut bigger registers and different things. So I'm only going to have someone come out and do drywall once. so that's why I'm just taping those holes for now. Then when I get the new registers, cut in and figure out what's going to go on and what needs to be patched over. I'll have a drywall guy come in and Patch those. So that's my logic with this right now. But I'm certainly happy with the Improvement and I Know that you know when I Um, put a heat pump in and enclose my mechanical closet 134 Cfms. That's going to be great and then the duck leakage the outside. We're going to address that when we replace all the ductwork and seal it up super tight. but that one? I I Definitely want to see that number get a little bit bigger, but regardless, we're going to go ahead and do the load calculation with what we have and then go from there. But I mean and all in all, it's not too bad for an 1849 square foot house. 1132 CFM 50. that's not too bad. Um, I'll have to do the calculations and find out the air changes per hour and see how it improves significantly, so that's not too bad. So we started out at seven and a half air changes per hour. Then we dropped all the way down to 3.8 air changes per hour and I Don't doubt we're going to tweak that a little. probably drop it just a little bit more. Um, but I don't think it's going to affect the load too much more. uh, especially that we know we're going to be downsizing. So I think we're going to be good, so that's it. And stay tuned for equipment selection, duct design, load calculation, all that stuff to come. shortly. at the end of the video, I said I was disappointed and what I mean by that is I expected better results from all the hard work I put in climbing through the attic, trying or attempting to seal up the sea or the can lights. Now there's a really good possibility that I just didn't seal them enough. like like maybe I didn't apply the spray foam right? Maybe I did the whole thing wrong because again, I don't know what I'm doing I'm just winging it right I'm just using general common sense or what I think is common sense to air seal those things down. but maybe the spray foam doesn't seal as good as I thought it did. um I I noticed a significant uh change in the uh, you know, just simply taping off the holes in the house. So I know that that you know that is a big deal and I noticed a significant drop in like the smoke activity when I ran the blower door again after I did the test Now I didn't show that part but I noticed that the outlets and the receptacles were performing a lot better and there was a lot less air leakage in them. So I was just kind of disappointed in the the blower door number. but I'm still happy with the results. Like you know, we dropped the blower door significantly. but I mean in all reality, the only thing I really did on the house was tape up some holes, close the door, and then then as best as possible, spray foam the outlets, the receptacles put on the gaskets, and just reduce the infiltration. Okay, a lot of the the issues the biggest: Improvement as far as the blower door number really comes from me just learning how to use my house properly. right? and I wouldn't even say learning is the right term because I know what needs to be done. It's just being ignorant to the fact that it was convenient to leave a door open, but yet that's adding to my high energy costs. And when I say high energy costs. In this last year, last two years, I started seeing significant electric bills just getting ridiculously bad to the tune of in the middle of the summer. sometimes six hundred dollars a month, sometimes eight hundred dollars a month. They were pretty darn High bills and um, I was just completely oblivious to those bills for so very long because I was just caught in a routine. So it's not like I didn't know better because I did. I was just So busy that I wasn't paying attention and I know that's a first world problem, right? and I recognize the fact that when I set my bills up on autopay and they just auto debit and sometimes you just forget and stuff just happens and whatever. But I'm thankful for the ability to be able to do that like you know. but I started noticing I'm like man, when you see your bank account drop and you're like what happened and you're like oh, I just paid the electric bill, why is it 600, you know, Like holy moly. And also I have teenagers. So getting teenagers to learn how to do certain things and to make sure that you know they're they're turning lights off and different stuff like that? That's there's a lot of stuff we could do. Okay, so I'm looking forward to feedback. If you all have some, please leave a comment in the YouTube video, Shoot me an email Hvacrvideos Gmail.com Let me know. Okay, if you guys are saw something that I completely did wrong, how you know a term that I used incorrectly which I'm sure there's lots of terms that I used incorrectly. Please let me know I would like to become better at this. This is the first time I've ever used these tools now. I Was fortunate enough that The Energy Conservatory was gracious enough to loan me the tools so that way I could use them and they've been very patient with the fact that this has taken me forever. So thank you very much to the energy! Conservatory You guys are amazing! Okay, um, it has been really awesome to be able to test this stuff because it's very eye-opening It really is. and I think and I'm going to go out on a limb in order for HVAC systems in homes and Commercial to get better, we really need to stop ignoring air leakage. We really need to stop ignoring airflow. Same same principle I've lived in this house for a very long time and I've just been ignorant to the fact that you know I know I need to shut that garage door. but I don't you know it's just something I've been living with, right? But there's so much wasted energy and using these tools is really opening my eyes to the amount of infiltration we have and it starts to make me wonder when my family is getting sick. My wife has an autoimmune disease. You know all these different things and how much of dirty air leads to exaggerating our sickness and exaggerating her autoimmune disease? Like does any of it. I mean it couldn't be bad to air see in my house and bring in proper, clean, fresh outside air. So those are all things that I want to work on. The next thing I want to say is if you guys are interested in purchasing any of these tools that you saw here, look at your normal distributors or you can go to Truetechtools.com I have an affiliate link set up with them if you use the offer code. big picture. one word on most of the items that they sell and they sell pretty much all the items that I used in this video. You'll get an eight percent discount on checkout and I get a small commission so it's a great way to help support the project and support the channel. And that goes for any tools that you purchase from Truetech Tools. So check them out and if you like anything you see you know consider picking it up. Uh I will say that one of my favorite tools that I think is going to two of them actually that I used in this video. obviously the blower door is amazing. the duck Blaster is amazing I don't really use those too much in my normal line of work really at all. I can think of maybe a few times where they would have come in handy. but the True Flow that is revolutionary, right? And the Dg8 manometer? Those two right there. That Dg8 is so small and it is so accurate. And the cool thing on the Dg8 manometer is that it's constantly, um, calibrating itself the entire time you're using it. You can hear the little pump in there like you know, verifying that it's accurate. So it's It's very, very accurate manometer. and So check that out. That thing is totally worth its weight in gold. and uh, the the true flow though I see some serious potential in the industry with that true flow. The fact that it's wireless, it connects and it gives you a true airflow reading is so awesome and I can see that working on the commercial side too and being a very beneficial tool for us because imagine normal service techs going out to do a service call and being able to accurately get air flow on whatever they're working on right now. It really is only made for residential and maybe smaller package units right now, but I can see in the future some cool things happening so stay tuned again. Thank you all so very much for all the support in watching these videos! It's really awesome! It's really humbling to see everything that you guys have to say. I Recently actually just yesterday was at the Ihaki trade show in Pasadena California and it was so awesome! There were so many people there that wanted to stop and have a conversation with me that recognized me from the videos and it is really really awesome and very humbling. So thank you everybody for all the support I Really appreciate you and we will catch you on the next one? Okay..