Unplugged Living

Keeping Warm Tips - Stopping the Drafts

by Kevin Humphrey on November 26th, 2005

I’m going to continue on with my series of posts on ways to help keep yourself warm this winter, in light of the higher heating costs that many of us are facing. Today I’m going to talk about sealing up your home.

For many of us, the homes that we live in are not the most modern or well-built. Our homes have drafts and old windows and leaky doors and such. When facing a possibly expensive winter like this one, it could pay to take the time and effort to go the extra mile in winterizing your house.

I’m going to be doing the bulk of my own home winterization tomorrow, and among the items on my to-do list…

• I’ll be applying plastic film to most of my windows.
• The windows that I can’t apply the plastic to will get a round of removable caulking on the inside seams.
• I’ll be re-applying the exterior caulking on all of my windows and doors.
• I have a gap between the chimney of my fireplace and my ceiling that I’m going to stuff with a foam gap filler.
• In surveying the exterior of my home, I found some larger gaps in a couple of spots such as along where the foundation and first floor meet, where the chimney and siding meet, etc. These I’ll be filling with an expanding foam caulk that provides insulation in the larger and harder to fill gaps.

Jen over at the Domestik Goddess blog posted an article a couple of days ago (here’s the link to it)that also reminded me of some spots that many folks might forget to assess when getting ready for winter. That article addresses the fireplace flue, the attic access and the clothes dryer vent.

I personally stopped using my clothes dryer last spring, removing and filling in my dryer vent then, so I don’t need to worry about it now, but that’s definitely a place to take a look at if you’ve got one. In some previous winters, I had actually changed to an interior vent for my dryer for the season. You get the heat plus the needed moisture, but if you’re going to consider that, you may want to look at switching to an all-natural fabric softener as well instead of dryer sheets which contain chemicals that you may not want to be venting into your home.

On to the fireplace flue. Now I’ve got a fireplace, but I never use it because it’s an old inefficient one that would suck more heat out of the house than put in if I actually used it. I thought that because I’ve kept the flue closed that I’d be fine, but after reading that article over at Jen’s blog, I did a quick check with the flame of a lighter and sure enough, there’s air moving up through there and hence I’m losing heat that way.

There are a number of options for insulating the flue of a fireplace, but I think I’m going to try a simple and low-tech one. I’m going to fill a garbage bag with crumpled up newspapers and then jam it up into the space below the flue. Don’t pack it too tight because you want the air in the bag to act as the insulator but at the same time, make sure you’ve got a snug fit up there to cut off the air flow.

I’ll report back later on how that goes and one important thing to do if you choose to block up your chimney with anything is to place a prominent note in or close to the fireplace to remind yourself or others that it is in fact blocked. You don’t want to be starting a fire until you’ve cleared out whatever is in there.

The final item that that article mentions is the attic access. Not all homes have an access to the attic from inside, but if yours does, take a good look at it. All too often, even though the ‘floor’ of the attic is well insulated, there is just a piece of plywood for the access with little or no insulation over that spot. The solution that I’m going to try again is the garbage bag full of crumpled newspaper. In my case, there is a recess in my ceiling where the access is. I’m going to stuff the bag of newspapers into that recess and then use some sticky velco buttons to attach a piece of fabric over the opening and cover the sight of the bag.

We’ve already had a few cold days and nights here in central Ontario and I’ve been paying close attention recently to colder spots in the house and how often the furnace is coming on through the day, so I’m interested to see how much effect the actions I take tomorrow will have. I’ll be sure to follow here with my findings.

If any of you have got any tricks or tips for sealing up your home for the winter that you’d like to share, please feel free to do so.

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POSTED IN: Conservation, Education, General