Videos on the AeroBarrier Process
AeroBarrier is a revolutionary way to air seal a home. So, if you think about a home, if you think about the way a home is framed—windows, doors—there are lots of little places that air leaks out of our homes. What AeroBarrier basically does is where once there was a leak, the AeroBarrier product seals those leaks—as small as a hair, as large as 5/8 of an inch. So, all the things you wouldn’t normally seal through other processes, AeroBarrier is kind of a finish coat that plugs all those little gaps.
In terms of the way it's applied, it's a pretty cool self-contained system. It's a trailer that we own. We back the trailer right up to the house and deploy all the equipment. And really, it’s three main components:
There's a series of spray emitters that are placed throughout the home to disperse the product evenly.
There's a compressor and a generator that generate both power and air to deliver the system.
And then there's a computer and a pump that we set up in the garage.
It's all computer-monitored, computer-controlled, that disperses the AeroBarrier product in a ratio with air to atomize that product in the home.
So, what we do is set up all of our equipment. We'll put all the sprayers throughout the home, we will seal up any big doors where we haven't installed those doors yet, and we'll put some film over the windows. We’ll basically plastic-off or film-off anything we don't want to seal, because believe me—if you don't, AeroBarrier will seal it. It's just kind of the way it works.
Then we'll start setting up the system, meaning we'll run air through it, we'll run water through it, clean the system out. And the computer basically controls the whole process. The whole system will heat the home. It will humidify the home with the dispersion of the AeroBarrier product, and then it will increase the pressure on the home, causing it to leak. And then anywhere it's leaking, that product leaks out with the air that we're blowing out, and as soon as it transitions from that hot, humid climate inside the home to a difference—so to colder or to drier—that's what causes it to change phase. So it changes from being an atomized product in the air to a caulking-like product that will collect on the studs, will collect on the on the siding, you know, wherever it is that that leak is occurring. It'll start to form on the edges and then seal on itself until it seals the leak up.
So when we start the process, we see a very dramatic drop in the leakage in the home within about the first half hour of application. And as the home begins to become tighter and become more sealed, there's less air moving, there's less air leaking out through these smaller and smaller leaks, and the system kind of slows down a little bit. So typically, on a Mandalay home—where we're aiming for a 0.3 ACH 50, or a 0.3 air changes per hour, which is probably about 5,000 percent tighter than a code-built home—that process will take us about two and a half to three hours.
And we think it's very, you know, we think it's a very worthwhile pursuit. Again, the tighter the home is, the better we control the heating-cooling loads. We control the comfort; we control the health of the home. So, for us, an extremely tight home with the addition of AeroBarrier is a really great product, a really great process for us, and allows us to consistently deliver really high-quality Mandalay homes.