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General information

View our brief overview video on how Pulse works.
Much like other air permeability testing methods, only a guideline can be offered as to the suitability of Pulse for a given application. Due to varying levels and leakiness of buildings, results may not be obtainable even for properties within the guidelines.To ensure successful testing, it is recommended that you use a sufficient number of air receivers for the space being tested.

Pulse Air Receiver Estimator

Use our handy tool to estimate the number of air receivers required to perform a successful Pulse test based on a building’s envelope area or volume and anticipated leakiness.
On occasion, very airtight spaces may result in a warning that the achieved pressure range was too high. Whilst the typical solution to this is to lower the pressure in the tank there are scenarios where this will not suffice.Under these circumstances, there is an option in the test setup process on the Settings screen that will allow you to change the Building profile to “Very airtight”. This will trigger a 3-second burst of air for both steps.
Calibration certificates are emailed to the lead contact for your company when equipment is purchased as well as after every service.Replacement copies of the certificates can be obtained by contacting us.

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Using the equipment

Pulse controllers contain either a 16GB SD card or 16GB of eMMC flash memory. This is sufficient capacity to store up to 100,000 tests locally on the device.Test files can always be uploaded to your cloud account for permanent storage and reporting purposes.

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Test results and analysis

All results displayed by your Pulse controller and on Pulse Online are presented at both 4 and 50 Pa pressure differences for each of the result metrics.Low pressure airtightness testing, using Pulse, is a comparatively new concept compared to the traditional high pressure testing carried out using a blower door fan.The Pulse equipment measures the air leakage directly at 4 Pa. This is a pressure level most representative of day-to-day conditions, making it well suited to assessing background leakage or to more reliably determine an infiltration rate for energy performance calculation purposes with minimal extrapolation.The 50 Pa result has been extrapolated based on a standard equation derived from a large sample of previous Pulse tests.

Air Leakage Pressure Converter

Use our calculation tool to easily convert air leakage rates between 4Pa, 50Pa and infiltration (ACH).
Refer to conversion factors for more information on the relationship between different high and low pressures.
A building or enclosure will present itself as being more leaky when a higher pressure is exerted upon it. Additionally, higher pressures can also force what are termed as ‘convoluted leakage paths’ which would not be present in either low pressure testing or during normal conditions or in gusting winds.Other differences include that the fan requires an external doorway to be open with the fan mounting placed inside it which might form a poor seal and create a potential leakage path during the test.
This will usually be as a result of many of the factors described above. It can, however, also be as a consequence of the error associated with extrapolating the Pulse data up to 50 Pa (the cited achieved pressure range are the pressures as which Pulse has directly measured the air leakage).Other factors can include variations in test set up and changes on site, especially when testing is conducted at different times by different testers.Fundamentally they are two different tests carried out at two different pressures and absolute agreement would not be expected.