As this video is starting out I Just gotta stop and and give a special thanks to my friends over at the Energy. Conservatory The Energy Conservatory has been very, very awesome. They've been helping me out to understand the building science side of things a little bit more. Understand that I completely have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to building science I Just know that I wanted to change the air conditioner in my house and I said hey, you know what I don't want to just put a like for like system in because I knew that my system was oversized.

Okay, so before we even figured out what I needed in my house, what we started doing was evaluating the envelope the entire house. We're evaluating the air leakage, the infiltration and we're looking at that and we're using that data to help us determine what size system my house needs. Okay, so I made some corrections and you guys will see as we're going through to the air leakage in my house right? made some repairs to some things and then we took that information and we ran all those numbers through a load calculation software and we decided what we're going to go with. So I just want to say thank you again to the Energy Conservatory for all their help and let's get on with the video.

All right. it's time for the final blower door on my house. Got everything taped off, we went around and made a lot of adjustments. ended up putting can light inserts and all the can lights around the house and then using Caulking and uh, caulked around them, then set them up there so they have airtight seals on top of all the can lights.

We have the I think they're tan mat covers for insulation reasons and a little bit of air leakage reasons. So let's see now that I put all these can light covers in how big of a difference it makes. so we're going to go through. We just ran our Baseline test and I need to go ahead and take the Rings off.

We're going to run through the test and we'll see what our final blower door number is, test app on the Uh Tec app basically or the auto test app and it's working through all the process and it's going to tell me when to put the Rings back on. So we're running with an open fan right now and it's saying flows too small. So then we're going to work through all the different steps until we get to the final one and then we'll get our actual blower door number. All right.

Well, it just finished the test. It went through all the different steps and here's what we have to look at. So we have 3.19 air changes per hour at um, 50 Pascals and we have a measured CFM of about 935 cfms of leakage at 50 Pascals. So we increased or decreased our blower door number a massive amount.

I'm pretty sad. I mean I I'm really actually satisfied with that 935 Cfms of leakage. That's awesome. Okay, um I do think that there is going to be a little bit more Improvement Eventually, when I I'm not going to do it right now.

but when I open my attic, seal the top plates once I seal the top plates I think that number is going to come down even more. But what an awesome change from the 2500 plus Cfms of leakage. I think if I remember right or 2300 Cfms of leakage that we started with, that's epic. Like Epic.

So now we have our blower door number of 935 and we are going to use that for our load calculation. uh to size my equipment. So here we are I am in the quick model 3D Modeling load calculation software. Okay, I'm looking at a 3D model of my house.

You can see we have all the windows. We have basically everything drawn out. We've taken into account the vaulted ceilings um, coming over so we have vaults all over multiple ceilings. This is my living room area.

This is my master bedroom area right here. Um, we have gone through I measured out the entire house my friend Adam Muffet is actually the one that designed this for me and Drew this out I Just went and basically did a bunch of measurements in my house, figured out what windows I have, what insulation I have in the walls, what insulation I have in the Attic we are a slab on grade Foundation um my existing air handler or furnace I Guess you can say because I am currently running a gas heat system is in an interior utility closet right in here. We are going to keep it in the same utility closet I am not going to move my my new air handler I'm putting in a heat pump system I Am not going to move my new air handler into the attic. We are still going to have the ducks in the Attic because that's the way the house was designed.

as far as the duck design goes. Um, we are going to come up with um round rigid duct coming up and we're going to have a main trunk and then off of that we are going to be doing uh, basic normal flex duct going down to the drops we have designed and when I say we I Really got to give credit to my buddy Adam Okay Adam Muffin, he's the one that really spent the time making sure that everything was set up the way that it should be. We decided if you look up above right here you can see that I am right at about a two ton. As far as cooling and heating were a little bit over on the heating load and we're a little bit just a hair under on the cooling load.

but we decided to or I decided to after thinking about lots of different brands of equipment and doing a bunch of different research. communicating non-communicating what do I want to go with and I decided to go with a high efficiency. the fully communicating uh Carrier Infinity system is what I went through or went with I already have the equipment I have not installed it yet I went with a two ton system. Um, as far as the two ton comes, we are a little bit shy on our heating load.

okay and I could supplement that with resistive heat. Uh, but I decided not to do heat strips on my system I am gonna run it uh again. I'm I'm I think I'm only like a thousand or two thousand BTUs shy of what the actual equipment can do uh, you know on its performance data and we are just a little bit shy at the load conditions and everything. but I'm not concerned about that at all.

my design temperature is not a big deal I think I'm going to be just fine. Okay, so I'm getting ready to install the equipment once we get done with that, then of course I'll be having some more videos and I've got some other other footage on this one right here and I do want to explain that that using this software we did take into account the Uh, the blower door number and we took into account also mechanical ventilation. We are bringing in some mechanical ventilation for fresh air into the house. Uh, we got the blower door number down below a thousand.

but we're definitely going to be bringing fresh air into the house too. So I will be. You know, working on that Currently got the duck Blaster out I'm really curious about the air leakage. Please excuse my messy garage here.

but I'm really curious about the air leakage on my exist or my brand new air handler that I'm about to install. Now this is a high-end uh Carrier Infinity air handler that we're about to install at my house. Well that's pretty good numbers. I mean I'd like to see it a little bit lower and it will be lower when I'm done with it.

but at 25 Pascals of pressure, we are at 5.8 Cfm's 5.9 Cfms of leakage and all the leakage. Really? I Can feel it around the you know these connections. These these guys right here. the electrical connections.

You can feel it. Everything has gaskets on it, but right here around the filter door you can feel the air really leaking out. Now this is a smoke puffer, right? And you see how the smoke is lazy and it just sits there right? But when I put it right here, Boom the smoke just blasts away because it's leaking right in this corner. Same thing right over here.

right in this corner. There we go. Leaking right there. It's also leaking around the refrigeration line connections, So it's so important that we have those guys.

those those O-rings I'm feeling leaks around the drain line connections I'm feeling air blowing out at me right now. now. What I'm really curious about is what happens if I remove a screw like let's take a screw out and see how much leakage comes through just a screw hole. So I took one screw out and it went up 0.1 so it's holding steady.

It was at 5.8 5.9 and now it's holding steady at six Cfms of leakage. So let's try something and experiment here. Let's go ahead and hit start. Let's see if we can get this guy up to speed.

So we're pushing for 25 Pascals. Let's see if we can get there with this ring because I just did something. So this is interesting. Okay Cool! So I think this is going to work? Let's give it another couple seconds, let it get up to speed.

I Have it on cruise right now so it's automatically going up to 25 pascals. one more second. All right. 10.8 10.9 Cfms of leakage if you take off the rubber grommet for the liquid line.

So you've got five Cfms of leakage just from this grommet alone. One grommet. Okay, so you've got to make sure these things are in there. It's so imperative.

Um, and also, you know you got to make sure you tight air seal as much as possible. Of course you don't want to duck seal the panels on, but you know you want to make sure that you're putting everything in there. you're You're getting all the screws on. You're getting tape all the way behind sealing your stuff because you know five Cfm's a leakage just from one grommet.

That's a significant amount there. Imagine if I took the suction line grommet off. So those are some pretty cool numbers. Pretty interesting.

Uh, how low the air leakage is on this? you would think it would be perfect, but it's not gonna be. So Things that we got to consider: I'm going to turn this guy off because there's needlessly running at a high CFM right now. But things to consider is it's like what happens if you, uh, make your electrical connections and you don't air seal or put some silicone in the end of the conduit. You know that's connected to this because once we pop this electrical connection out and hook up conduit and you know, hook up power to the unit, that's going to be a potential leak.

Point All these places are going to save us energy by sealing all this stuff up. So pretty cool information. We've made a lot of adjustments to the house now. Some of the adjustments that I've made to my house were simple things, like literally retraining myself and my family on how to properly use our house, what doors have to stay shut, right? Some of that stuff seems obvious and I very well could have you know just done a blower door number while closing my garage door.

But I figured you know what? No, let's be honest and let's show people how I truly use my house. and so that's what I did the first blower door number that I got right was uh, 2205 Cfms of leakage okay at Cfm50 and then what I did was that was just my initial test in, but then I started making adjustments right I closed my garage door I taped up a few cosmetic holes that we had in the house that aren't just cosmetic because they actually affect the air leakage. Okay, so once I taped up the holes, closed the garage door I got the blower door number down to 15.49 Okay then what I did was I found that there was a lot of air leakage and you can see all this information in the previous videos. Okay, this is all in the same playlist.

You can go back. This is the third video. you can go back to the first two. but then what I did was I found there was a lot of mechanic or leakage in my mechanical room where my furnace was located because there's fresh air coming into that room right to satisfy and to help the furnace operate properly Right for proper combustion.

We needed that fresh air. So when I taped off my mechanical room door I got my blower Nord number down to 1415. Okay, so then I decided to tape off all my registers right and get a roughed duct leakage number and I taped off all the registers and the return and I got the blower door number down to 12 11. Okay, CFM leakage at Cfm50? Then what I did was I put the covers the the rock wool covers over all my can lights once I did that I was actually kind of disappointed with all the work that it took to get those rock wool covers in and how much time it took me.

Um, I also sealed some Outlets too went and sealed some electrical penetrations in some of the outlets I got my blower door number down to 11 30 32. I wasn't quite satisfied and that was the last video you saw me saying okay, that's my final blower door number but I wasn't satisfied with that. So I decided to go the extra mile and uh, took those can light inserts and cocked them into the ceiling and got my blower door number down all the way to 935. So 935 Cfms of leakage at Cfm50.

Okay, that is a significant improvement over the 2202.5 actually I kept. You know what? I realized that in the editing I kept saying 2205 but it was actually 2202.5 but you know that's just my own problems. but still, that is a significant amount of leakage and I still think I'm gonna get that number down even more. Which also helped me to feel more comfortable because in the video I told you guys that we went a little bit aggressive on our sizing with the heating load.

technically I should have. You know if you really really wanted to meet the numbers, I should have either added supplementary heat strip heaters or I should have gone up a size. but if I did that, then I would have been massively oversized on my cooling load too. so we had to kind of find a happy medium.

But the fact that I know that eventually I'm gonna go in and fix the insulation in my attic because we have bats up there or bat insulation. I Should say not bats, but we have bat insulation up there and it's it's not very efficient, you know with the can lights and stuff it's kind of just sitting over the can lights and it's not really sealed. So The plan is eventually to take all the the the insulation bats out and go in there and air seal all the top plates right, the top pieces of wood where the Romex Wire runs down through. there's little holes and different things.

We're going to seal all that and then we're going to go in with probably blown in like cellulose insulation. okay and then blow it all in and get a higher insulation number when we do that I really think that that that you know lack of heating? um delivered capacity by the what is it 2000 BTUs I think I think I was shy I'm not concerned about that. Okay, so we're gonna see a significant Improvement when I do that. but for now, the next video that you should see is basically me doing the install of my equipment and then potentially setting it up, commissioning it and starting it up.

I'm hoping that we get this done sooner than later because it's currently May 27th of 2023 and uh, it's kind of cool outside so I'm looking forward to getting this done. um got about another couple days I think I'm hoping about in the next week I should get all my custom-made um uh, Supply diffusers and we're having a lot of stuff ordered and stuff because we were very particular in our sizing and really paying attention to the throw of the diffusers that we were using. and so anyways, but that'll be all in some future footage. but I really appreciate you making it to the end of the video Again, Special thanks to the Energy Conservatory and to True Tech Tools.

Uh, speaking of True Tech Tools. If you're interested in purchasing any tools, I suggest you go to Truetechtools.com find what you like on there. You can find all the products that I was using in these last three videos from The Energy Conservatory The Blower Door, The Duck Blaster The Smoke Puffer The True Flow Grid You can find all of that at Truetechtools.com And if you use my offer code big Picture one word: you can get an eight percent discount on checkout on majority of the items on Truetechtools.com and I get a small commission when you do that. So it's another great way to help support my channel.

You know you're going out to purchase tools. get them from Truetechtools.com Use my offer code I Get a small commission and it's just kind of a win-win for all of us, right? So if you see any of the Cool Tools that I used and you like them, go check it out and again, thank you so very much. If you're interested in supporting the channel and other means, there's links in the show notes of this video for PayPal Patreon YouTube Channel memberships. but I say this all the time.

the easiest way to support this channel is simply watch the videos from beginning to end. That's that's really the easiest way. Okay I really, really appreciate you guys putting up with my nonsense here on YouTube I Don't know why you guys keep watching, but it is what it is. Apparently you guys like the ramblings of my brain, so thank you so very much.

I Really do appreciate you and we will catch you on the next one. Okay.