Air Tightness | Marsh Flatts Farm Self Build Diary

Week 58, Day 3:

Some more progress on the air-tightness, where the build team think they’ve found the main source of the leakage – at the join between the masonry construction which forms the ground & first floor walls and the second floor which is formed using structural wooden panels
- There’s a bit more work to do to fix this and to check for other leaks (and fix those) then it will be ready for a further air test
More work on the retaining wall and the planting beds on the north side, including a delivery of pea gravel for back-filling around the drain pipe which will run along the back of the retaining wall
Some remedial work on the plastering in a couple of places within the kitchen, most notably next to the sliding door where the reveal was visibly out of square
An alarm message from the Ground Source Heat Pump (Temperature Limiter Alarm 52) which was due to the primary circuit for the hot water tank having been de-pressurised during some other plumbing work yesterday
- I received the alarm message via email and also via a Push notification to my iPhone (which has the NIBE Uplink app installed) and sure enough the heat pump was in Alarm mode (showing red rather than green on the main LED)
- This particular message requires a physical reset – removing the whole front panel and pushing a small and fairly anonymous switch on electrical panel

Week 58, Day 3

Perforated pipe ready for installation behind the retaining wall

Squared-off plaster reveal next to sliding door in Kitchen

Week 55, Day 4:

Another attempt at the air tightness testing, more with a view to understanding where the air is leaking and how much is going through the sliding doors than in expecting to pass the test
By running comparative tests with the doors taped up and then without, it looks like the doors are contributing roughly 0.17 to the overall air leakage
- That’s for the four Internorm HS330 sliding doors and one badly-adjusted hinged door which has a gap at one corner
Even with the doors taped up there’s still a significant leak somewhere, which is showing up in one of the bathrooms and also behind the false wall in the Living Room
The plan now is to hire an uncalibrated Blower Door and use that to apply pressure while eliminating as many leaks as possible, then commissioning another test (which will hopefully be successful)

Week 55, Day 4

Creating an access to check for air leaks under the TV Alcove shelf in the Living Room

Marsh Flatts Farm Self Build Diary