How to Test for Air Duct Leakage

Heidi: We just finished sealing up all the duct work in the house. We’ve covered up registers and now Gary is getting ready to run his test. So tell us a little bit more about what’s going on here.

Gary Kahanak: I’ll be checking for total duct leakage and in this test is Heidi said I've sealed off the registered rails and I’ll be using this special duct blaster fan to pressurize the duct and this system will tell us just exactly how many cubic feet per minute it leaks.

Heidi: Ah okay.

Gary Kahanak: And that will tell us whether with the expensive efforts I'm tidying that up.

Heidi: Okay. Tell me too you have one of these running all the way up to a duct tear.

Gary Kahanak: This is the pressure meter that measure air pressure. It brings small differences here. The green hose has a probe that goes into one of the ducts and the yellow and red hose measures the pressure at the pan.

Heidi: Okay.

Gary Kahanak: So it compares the difference.

Heidi: So interesting.

Gary Kahanak: So we can see what happens.

Heidi: Okay.