Door Blower Usage

By: Abdullah Khaliqi

The door blower is one of many versatile tools utilized by R. J. Kenney Associates, Inc. (RJK ). This blog post highlights one of the many ways it can be used.



Once placed in an exterior door, the door blower can pressurize an entire condo unit, or even an entire building.

For example, the test shown above  was performed as a pretest for a client looking to obtain a LEED credit, specifically the NC-2009IEQp2: Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) Control. To obtain the credit it must be proven that tobacco smoked in one condo unit will not travel to adjacent units. The testing includes pressurizing an entire unit, both positively and negatively, and determining the Effective Leakage Rate.



As the actual LEED Certification requires that the unit be in a finished condition and this unit was incomplete, the full test was not authorized; however, RJK is always willing to accommodate a client, and we used this as a pretest to identify areas of air leakage.

Utilizing a combination of the door blower to negatively pressurize the unit (to suck air/smoke in as opposed to blowing air/smoke out when under positive pressure) and a smoke wand, points of air leakage were identified for our client.

 As you can see, the door blower testing  revealed unforeseen points of air infiltration into the unit. Everyone expects air infiltration to occur around windows and doors, but electrical outlets are a surprising contributor to air infiltration. After viewing the above demonstration, our client decided to place a bead of silicone sealant between the outlet’s electrical box and the surrounding drywall, which will result in far less air infiltration into the unit via outlet boxes. Identifying required adjustments during the pretest provided our client with information that will be critical when the actual certification testing is conducted.