When it comes to home energy performance, comfort, durability and health, the United States falls short in the ranks compared to other developed countries. This is based on the 35 years of experience that Colin Genge has in testing houses from coast to coast and from selling diagnostic tools to over 10,000 technicians who have tested millions more.

Duct leakage in existing homes can range from 12% to 35%.

Most American houses have poor quality flex duct running outside of the envelope into attics and/or crawlspaces and typically leak an average of about 20%. Some as high as 50%! Code for new houses allows roughly 12% leakage but most houses are not properly tested if they are tested at all. See The Compliance Project for details. These figures are also reflected in past DOE studies of homes built across the US. Older homes are generally much worse especially when duct tape and flex fail over

In 1980 I calibrated the fledgling Retrotec Energy Innovations Ltd.’s blower door at the National Research Council (NRC) in Ottawa, Canada.  It used RPM and pressure drop to crudely measure flow.  Little did I know that what I learned from the head air flow scientist at NRC would result in a 38-year long career making Retrotec the largest calibrated door fan manufacturer in the World.

Retrotec stands for retrofit technology, which means fixing houses after they’re built.  Our first blower doors were designed to perform energy audits on these houses using their in-house energy analysis software based on HOT2000.  It ran on a 32k pocket computer.   Currently known as Home Performance (HP), this application was promoted by Retrotec as a non- government funded business opportunity.  Eventually this resulted in the HP application being spun off as The Comfort Institute which was later absorbed by AeroSeal. 

Retrotec