With this testing process, you can rest assured that your home is tightly sealed. We test spray-foam homes all the time, typically at the end of the job and find common air leakage problems because this quality-control test is unknown to most contractors and homeowners. Our average testing of spray-foam homes is roughly 2.0 air changes but it's very common that we find them to be in excess of 4 air changes. Any score above 2.5 air changes we consider to be above normal, and now the home will need repairs, but this can be easily avoided with a punchout test. 

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How the process works?

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This process works in a very simple way. We start with pressurizing the living space, which has already been spray-foamed and has all the windows and doors sealed(dried-in), but no drywall has yet to be installed. Once pressurized, we notate the current cfm's of air coming into the living space and do a thorough inspection for leaks. The leaks are then plugged using foam cans and viola!, you're home is now twice as tight as when we started(common results). 

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Our tightest home to date is currently at .5 air changes per 50 pascals of pressure, and we commonly achieve below 1 air change when we are able to do our punchouts before drywall. 

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Once drywall is installed, however, the likelihood of being able to repair air leakage is usually not achievable. So, we cannot express enough the importance of testing spray-foam homes early in the construction process, and even one more time when the home is completed to ensure subcontractors have not caused damage to the spray-foam envelope.

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The way a spray-foam house works is certainly different from conventional insulated home structures in that the attic space is considered "conditioned space"(not A/C). In this case, the attic space above the living space is theoretically completely sealed off from the outside and does not vent out. We underlined that last word to make the point that most new construction spray-foamed homes have small holes and sometimes giant holes the size of a basketball or larger that are found during punchout testing that would've been a sure mold problem down the road for the homeowners. When this hot, humid outside air enters into the attic space it becomes trapped and begins to rapidly cool along the a/c duct work first, then progressing to the drywall paper and working its way through the drywall until it appears on the other side of the drywall where the homeowner is finally alerted to the fact that something is wrong. By this point, the damage is done, and now the new homeowners are faced with a mess. 

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Furthermore, by doing this punchout test, you are getting the most bang for your buck in that your making sure that your new home is as tight as possible and will have the most inexpensive electrical bills for the ever-increasing cost of energy for decades to come. 

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Call today for more information!