Air­tight­ness tests (also known as "blower door tests") are use­ful for as­sess­ing the level of air­tight­ness of a build­ing. Passing this test is a pre­requis­ite for achiev­ing the Pass­ive House and En­erPHit stand­ard.

The meas­ure­ment helps identi­fy and close re­main­ing air leak­eages in the build­ing en­vel­ope, thereby, as­sess­ing the qual­ity of the in­stalled build­ing com­pon­ents. As the vent­il­a­tion sys­tem re­quires a cer­tain level of air­tight­ness, it also im­proves the func­tion­al­ity of the vent­il­a­tion sys­tem.

Dur­ing the meas­ure­ment, a fan is in­stalled air­tight in a door or win­dow. Leaks are then de­tec­ted in the build­ing at a neg­at­ive pres­sure of 50 pas­cals. The leaks can be loc­al­ised by hand, with a flow meter or, in in­ac­cess­ible places, with a ther­mo­graph­ic cam­era.

This in­creases the care taken by the com­pan­ies in­volved in the build­ing en­vel­ope and pre­vents fu­ture struc­tur­al dam­age, draughts and cold air pock­ets.

Ser­vice: Air­tight­ness test in­clud­ing de­tailed doc­u­ment­a­tion of leak­ages and, if ne­ces­sary, cre­ation of ther­mo­graphs un­der neg­at­ive pres­sure con­di­tions

Con­tact: mail@pas­siv.de

Build­ing mon­it­or­ing can be help­ful in prov­ing that the en­ergy re­quire­ment cal­cu­lated on the basis of long-term cli­mate data for the loc­a­tion and nor­mal us­age con­di­tions is also achieved in prac­tice. For this pur­pose, the most im­port­ant bound­ary con­di­tions are meas­ured, in par­tic­u­lar the weath­er and the in­door tem­per­at­ure. If more para­met­ers are re­cor­ded, an in­creas­ingly de­tailed pic­ture of the build­ing's per­form­ance can be cre­ated.

Two an­nu­al peri­ods are usu­ally covered, with the first year provid­ing as­sist­ance with com­mis­sion­ing and op­er­a­tion­al op­tim­isa­tion and the second year be­ing used for quant­it­at­ive ana­lys­is.

From min­im­al mon­it­or­ing for plaus­ib­il­ity checks to our stand­ard pro­ced­ure and de­tailed mon­it­or­ing to cla­ri­fy re­search ques­tions on the build­ing en­vel­ope, vent­il­a­tion sys­tems and sup­ply tech­no­logy, we have a wealth of ex­per­i­ence since 1996.

Ser­vice: Mon­it­or­ing in the de­sired scope and de­tail

Con­tact: wolf­gang.has­per@pas­siv.de

In­frared ther­mo­graphy visu­al­ises the heat ra­di­ation (in­frared light) of an ob­ject. It can be used to de­term­ine and visu­al­ise the sur­face tem­per­at­ure of a build­ing com­pon­ent. This provides us with in­form­a­tion about heat losses and en­ables us to qual­it­at­ively ana­lyse the im­ple­ment­a­tion of thermal in­su­la­tion meas­ures, thermal bridges and warm air flows. Quant­it­at­ive state­ments such as the ex­act thermal in­su­la­tion stand­ard of a build­ing com­pon­ent, on the oth­er hand, are dif­fi­cult to as­sess us­ing ther­mo­graphy. The cor­rect cre­ation and eval­u­ation of in­frared im­ages re­quires ex­pert­ise and spe­cial­ised know­ledge. When ana­lysed care­fully, ther­mo­graphy is a valu­able tool for as­sess­ing the thermal en­vel­ope of a build­ing.

Ser­vice: In­frared ther­mo­graphy for qual­ity as­sur­ance

Con­tact: mail@pas­siv.de