Good Morning all,
We are in the process of building a bio-compatible house in the Piemonte region of Italy. It is a double frame house (about the 2000 sq ft), with fully insulated 14″ walls. We hope the house will be certified CasaClima Gold Plus(kind of like PHI). We have completed all framing, 80% insulation, Vapour barrier, windows, doors. All services are installed, but not drywall.
The cost of doing Blower Door Tests here is very high, so we invested in a tester ourselves so we can monitor our progress, and when the project is done, we’ll go do blower tests around the countryside.
Anyway, we ran the first test yesterday, and obtained what everyone tells me is excellent. A 1.32 ACH50. However, this appears to be a long way from the 0.6 that I need for CasaClima Gold.
I have chased around the house looking for that “smoking gun” hole that explains where the air is coming from, and have determined that it probably doesn’t exist (all penetrations have been checked). It appears to be many very small areas that I’m not sure are easily fixed, short of foaming the inside of the house, which we would prefer not to do, hence the “bio” house. We have used no foams or chemical insulations to this point, only non-formaldehyde fiberglass insulation and perlite.
So my question is this. Given the level I am at now (1.32), what can I expect to see if the inside were completely drywalled (taped and mudded, but NOT ADA)? I should also mention that the exterior wrap is NOT complete, so not sure what the effect of this will be when done.
I am trying to determine if is it worth (or necessary) chasing all these ghosts.

Thanks for everyone’s time.
Alec