Cold Proofing

Homeowners are being hit with a double whammy this winter: not only are we experiencing an unusually cold winter, but energy costs have reached record highs.

What can a homeowner do to help contain home heating costs?

During the summer, we talked about insulation, energy-efficient doors and windows, as well as some ideas about saving on electrical costs. Here are a few other ideas.

Make sure your furnace or boiler and heat distribution system are cleaned, serviced and properly tuned. Obviously these pieces of equipment work best and most efficiently when they are well maintained. If your heating system uses ducts, for example, make sure the ducts are cleaned of dust and the outlet vanes are properly set. If you have a baseboard type system, whether hot water or electric, make sure the fins are clean and dust-free. Attention to these areas can increase the heat transfer efficiency of the system and, in turn, lower heating costs.

Something else that can pay big dividends for a small cash outlay and a little bit of effort is caulking and weather stripping around doors and windows. (Obviously, if you live in an older house, this item is more important than if you live in a house with modern, properly installed, well-insulated doors and windows.)

It is truly amazing just how much cold air can infiltrate into a house through cracks around doors and windows. For example, a window two and one half feet by four feet with a one-eighth-inch-wide crack around its perimeter would provide the same opening as a hole four and one half inches square! A door three feet wide by six feet, eight inches high with an eighth-inch crack around its perimeter would provide an opening similar to a square hole five and one quarter inches on each side!

To avoid this problem, there are a variety of products available at your local hardware store, ranging from foam weather stripping with a very convenient peel-off backing to various types of caulking, to rubber door sweeps that stop cold air from sneaking in under an outside door.

Another area to check--particularly if you have an older home--is around electrical outlets. In many cases there can be gaps in the wall insulation around outlet boxes in older homes that don’t have building wrap and some of the other modern techniques for keeping cold out and warmth in. There are some very neat foam insulation pieces available that are shaped specifically to fit behind an outlet cover plate and around the outlets themselves.

So don’t feel you have to sit back and take the winter cold along with its high heating costs. Fight back by taking the initiative and cold proofing your home!