Most of us spend over half our time indoors, and some family members are home over ninety percent of the time. So, of course, you want it to be a clean, comfortable, and healthy environment. Unfortunately, researchers have found that almost every home has hidden indoor air problems. Is your home one of them? The air inside is often, more polluted, unfortunately, than the air outside. Another common concern is excessive dust on the furniture that seems to reappear just a few days after house cleaning or dust that shows up on the AC vents. Many people are also simply not comfortable in their home. We find homeowners have a lot of complaints in their homes. Not only will they may have high energy bills, but they have comfort problems. My upstairs stays too hot in the summertime. My downstairs is always too cold in the winter. So your house is often too dry in the winter and too wet in the summer. If you have any of these common problems, it's a challenge to figure out the best solutions. The good news is that there's a better way to prioritize the solutions to all these common problems. The first step is to get a home and duct performance test. The process begins with a short interview of the adults living in the home. Next, your consultant will perform a series of inspections and tests. The primary test measures how leaky your home and duct work are. This is done using a computerized diagnostic instrument called an infiltrometer blower door. When a home performance contractor comes to your door, you're in for a new experience. He or she is not just going to ask a couple questions and prescribe a, replacement of a system. A home performance contractor is going to bring in some tools that are really quite eye opening for the homeowner. Originally developed by Department of Energy scientists, the infiltrometer has been featured in major publications such as National Geographic, Popular Science, and Better Homes and Gardens. The infiltrometer sets up in an outside doorway and creates a temporary pressure similar to a fifteen mile per hour wind on all sides of your home to find hidden leaks. It creates a great visual opportunity to find the air leaks on the home. And so we go on with a smoke puffer, and homeowners see firsthand, wow, look at all that air going through that recessed can, and recessed lights in upstairs attics are are big culprits and huge air leakers. Every home needs a certain minimum amount of ventilation. How you get it depends on the home, but you need it to ensure adequate indoor air quality. And it's fine when it's coming through windows when it's controlled ventilation. What we find all too often is that this air is coming through all the other building cavity holes. Now a lot of people think that windows and doors are a major leakage sites, but in fact, they're not. Typically, window and door leakage is only twenty percent of the total leakage. Often, the bigger leaks are large gaps under walls, behind walls, plumbing stacks, penetrations, under cabinets. These are the ones that cost the big energy, and they're not always obvious to find. As we have been testing houses more thoroughly for the past fifteen, twenty years, we have found that the worst leaks in the house are with the ducts in the distribution system. We find these systems, leak anywhere from twenty five to forty percent. I've seen some leaking even beyond that. Your consultant will perform tests on your decks to identify leakage, excessive pressures, and insufficient airflow to uncomfortable rooms. Your heating, cooling, and air filtration equipment will also be inspected and tested. A lot of customers see, you know, dirt around the registers and that kind of thing and think that then all they have to do is clean out the ducts. And in fact, the very high likelihood that what you have is a leaky duct system that's pulled all that dirt into the system. Certainly, duct cleaning is not a bad thing to do at all. In some cases, it should happen, but it is probably not needed as often as many homeowners think. And more often than often than not, the dust that the homeowners experiences is coming in from all the holes in the house that this air is passing through the attic crawl spaces and getting into the distribution system. It is more important to keep that dirt from entering the ducts in the first place. And when they're sealed and sized right and insulated and you have a high efficiency furnace filter, you'll find that that will solve most of your indoor air problem. This test also determines if your family is getting enough fresh air. Some houses are actually found to be too tight and would benefit from additional filtered outdoor air ventilation. Next, he'll visually inspect your home's insulation levels. If temperature conditions permit, some contractors will also use an infrared thermographic camera to detect energy wasting hidden problems that are causing hot or cold spots or high utility bills. The testing is very visual, and you'll learn things about your home and indoor comfort you didn't know before. And if you're handy, you should definitely be there. The testing usually finds many caulking and insulation problems that you can fix yourself as weekend projects. It is important for really both homeowners to be there when a home performance test happens. It isn't fair for just one spouse to be there and try to explain all of what this home performance contractor has done. Once the examination process is completed, your consultant will work with you to develop a prioritized improvement plan. He'll explain the most up to date and economical ways to solve any problems found in your home. Comfort Institute member contractors have the necessary instruments, computer software, and training. Instead of just selling Band Aids for symptoms, they propose permanent solutions for problems. They have the ability to provide a much wider range of solutions than single focus companies, and they also network with other reputable service providers to help implement solutions outside their core area of expertise. And as a condition of membership, they give a one hundred percent satisfaction guarantee on performance testing. There's no risk to you. You don't have to live with discomfort, high utility bills, or unhealthy indoor air in your home. Doing a home and duck performance test will find the cause of your problems and start you on your way to a safer, healthier, comfortable, and more affordable home.