There are two main blower door brands in the home performance contractor space: The Minneapolis Blower Door and the Retrotec Blower Door System. The Minneapolis Blower Door was first and the industry standard until Retrotec came along. This video is about setting up a Retrotec Blower Door, not a Minneapolis Blower Door.
Step-by-step blower door setup:
- Assemble the aluminum frame, snapping the numbered joints together.
- Connect hoses and cables to the fan: the red hose goes outside, and the yellow hose inputs to the fan. Connect data and power cables.
- Connect manometer: the red hose goes to the red input, and the yellow hose goes to the yellow input.
Key differences between Retrotec and Minneapolis blower doors
Retrotec has a multiple-hole adjustment panel instead of the different-sized rings that Minneapolis uses to choke down the fan opening. The hole pattern matches different configurations on the app-looking manometer screen.
You can link the fan controls to the hand-held manometer with data cables so the hand-held unit can keep the house at a steady pressure or flow.
Dial-in the digital manometer unit
First, go to 'Settings>Baseline." Click 'baseline.' when the number stabilizes, click "End capture." Go back to the home screen and select the blower door and configuration that you are using.
Next, set the pressure. In this demo, he is starting with 25 pascals.
With the house depressurized to 25 pascals, check the house for negative pressure disturbances before dialing it up to the 50 pascals that are standard for blower door tests. With the building depressurized to 50 pascals, air leakage data is displayed on the hand-held manometer unit.