Arctic Air Conditioning Company offers blower door tests, energy audits, and thermographic inspections to identify the major energy consuming factors in your building. These services typically return savings many times over the cost for years of advantages. Let’s get started today so you can start saving tomorrow.

Blower Door Tests

Arctic Air Conditioning Company uses blower door tests to see just how airtight your home really is. Homes that are lacking an airtight quality are subject to leaking vital conditioned air, thus resolving in more work for your air conditioner to keep your house cool. The blower door test is important to ensure that your house airtight to avoid larger energy costs due to air leakage, to reduce moisture condensation issues, to reduce possible uncomfortable drafts that may occur due to leak leaking outside, and to help decide how much ventilation may be necessary to assist in making acceptable indoor air quality.

The blower door itself is a forceful fan that mounts inside an exterior door frame, and expels air from the house in order to reduce the pressure inside the house. Since the outside pressure is higher, the pressure then flows back in through all the unsealed opening in your house, helping detect where the leaks are and where focus for sealing and insulation should be. The blower door is a frame and flexible panel that fits right into your exterior door, a fan with variable speed, a pressure gauge that allows us to monitor pressures inside and outside the home, and lastly, special equipment like hoses and a manometer to assist in measuring air flow.

Blower doors can come in two types. The calibrated type of blower door is loaded with several gauges that accurately measures the amount of air that is pulled out of the house by use of the blower door. This type is the one that is used by energy auditors because it provides the most information necessary for a successful audit. The other type is the uncalibrated blower door, and its only function is to locate leaks from the house. Contact Arctic Air Conditioning Company to arrange for your blower door test.

Energy Audits

Do you think your electricity bill is too high? That’s because it probably is. Your air conditioner works hard to push conditioned air throughout the house, and some of which may be in vain. Homeowners go to lengths to seal up any leaks they may have that is allowing air to escape the home, but leaks can often be hidden from plain sight. So how do you find these leaks and other ways your appliances in your house are running inefficiently?

A Home Energy Audit is the answer. An assessment of your home’s energy usage can prevent further mold, humidity, dust, and other allergen particles from circulating throughout your home and causing damage to your HVAC unit. A home energy audit is a two part assessment of your home that consists of an onsite home inspection with infrared thermography and a virtual assessment with the latest technology software to evaluate which areas of your home could need more insulation or any further infrastructure or appliance repairs. Arctic Air Conditioning Company is here to help you understand the energy usage of your home and to prevent future issues with your HVAC unit and other essential home appliances.

Thermographic Inspections

Thermography measures surface temperatures by using infrared video and still cameras. These tools see light that is in the heat spectrum. Images on the video or film record the temperature variations of the building’s skin, ranging from white for warm regions to black for cooler areas. The resulting images help the auditor determine whether insulation is needed. They also serve as a quality control tool, to ensure that insulation has been installed correctly.

A thermographic inspection is either an interior or exterior survey. The energy auditor decides which method would give the best results under certain weather conditions. Interior scans are more common, because warm air escaping from a building does not always move through the walls in a straight line. Heat loss detected in one area of the outside wall might originate at some other location on the inside of the wall. Also, it is harder to detect temperature differences on the outside surface of the building during windy weather. Because of this difficulty, interior surveys are generally more accurate because they benefit from reduced air movement. We are experts in Thermography and will assess your situation for the best possible inspection.

Thermographic scans are also commonly used with a blower door test running. The blower door helps exaggerate air leaking through defects in the building shell. Such air leaks appear as black streaks in the infrared camera’s viewfinder. Thermography uses specially designed infrared video or still cameras to make images (called thermograms) that show surface heat variations. This technology has a number of applications. Thermograms of electrical systems can detect abnormally hot electrical connections or components. Thermograms of mechanical systems can detect the heat created by excessive friction. Energy auditors use thermography as a tool to help detect heat losses and air leakage in building envelopes.

Infrared scanning allows Arctic Air Conditioning Company’s energy auditors to check the effectiveness of insulation in a building’s construction. The resulting thermograms help auditors determine whether a building needs insulation and where in the building it should go. Because wet insulation conducts heat faster than dry insulation, thermographic scans of roofs can often detect roof leaks. In addition to using thermography during an energy assessment, you should have a scan done before purchasing a house; even new houses can have defects in their thermal envelopes. You may wish to include a clause in the contract requiring a thermographic scan of the house. A thermographic scan performed by a certified technician is usually accurate enough to use as documentation in court proceedings. Contact Arctic Air Conditioning Company today to learn more about our thermographic inspections, the process, and the many benefits they provide.