Smoke Testing to Highlight Air Leakage Paths in Protected Enclosures

Smoke testing is one of the best ways of locating air leakage paths. Smoke generators or smoke pencils are used to help identify air leakage paths in the case of a room integrity test failure.

Air Pressure Testing's highly trained and experienced Enclosure Testing Engineers will be able to locate the problem areas and identify where air is leaking out of the building by walking around the test enclosure with a localised smoke puffer, pencil checking the most common problem areas first.

If required we can also undertake a large scale smoke test using a large capacity smoke generator, however this is only usually required on protected enclosures such as large data centers, however on 95% of projects we usually find that by using our experienced Air Tightness Engineers and a smoke puffer the air leakage paths can be accurately located.

The smoke won’t cause any damage to the building; however the building does needs to be emptied of all people for basic Health and Safety reasons, i.e. people falling down stairs or tripping over cables due to the poor visibility. Also, it is very important that the client contacts the local Fire Brigade to inform them of the smoke test to avoid unnecessary call outs and subsequent costs.

By combining our fan testing equipment, we blow the smoke out through any penetrations in in the enclosure envelope; this makes the air paths more visible. Smoke leaking from the enclosure can also be seen outside, and photographed to provide a record of any external leakage paths. Pressurised Smoke tests are ideal for identifying both generic and torturous areas of air leakage.

Once the smoke test has been completed and a smoke survey report forwarded to the client, targeted remedial works can then be undertaken to seal the building envelope. Once the appropriate remedial work has been undertaken the enclosure can be retested to confirm if the enclosure has passed the room integrity test and an acceptable level of integrity has been reached.

If you would like some more information in regards to Room Integrity Testing on your protected enclosure, please contact us now at: info@airpressuretesting.net, or call us on: 01525 303905.