Two states in two countries have bought in legislation of a mandatory air tightness test before handover can take place.
Updated 07/01/2020
- Denver, Colorado, USA – Denver will soon join the city of Fort Collins (where air tightness testing has been in it’s building codes since 2014), requiring all new builds and major renovation projects require air tightness testing.
- This means that when the city adopts the 2018 IECC energy code (scheduled to go into effect 1st May 2020) commercial and multifamily buildings are joining residential projects in requiring “blower door” testing to verify code compliance.
- Burnaby, Canada – From 1st September 2019, those building Part 9 homes will be required to comply with Step 1 of the BC Energy Step Code. This means single-family homes, duplexes and multi-unit building with a footprint of less than 600 square meters (6,458 square feet) will need to be tested.
- Step 1 only required for structures to perform equal or better than home built to the existing BC Building Code Standards. However, Burnaby then plans to jump to Step 3 of the code in “approximately one year”.
- Ohio, USA – From 1st July 2019, all homes will require a blower door test at final for code compliance. Ohio is not the first state to require mandatory blower door tests.
- In 2012, Illinois mandatory testing started to take place regardless of the path chosen for compliance. Maryland, Massachusetts, Georgia, Florida and also New York State also have mandatory air tightness testing.
This list will keep be updated when more states and countries introduce mandatory air tightness testing.
Click here to view all our members in the United Kingdom, Europe, United Arab Emirates, Australia and New Zealand.
