Going Green – Airtight Home

Making your home air tight – There are 6 things you can do to make your home more air tight. Weather it is summer or winter you need to control the amount of air that flows into or out of your home every day. These simple measures can pay for themselves within a few months of making the changes and can usually be done by anyone with a few simple tools.

1. Door Sweeps – Get down on all fours and look under all of the hinged doors in your home. Can you see daylight? Can you feel a breeze working its way either in or out? This should be step one. Install new door sweeps under your doors. The sweeps that the door came with, (if they are still there) were probably the cheapest, bare minimum sweep that mass-produced doors are made with. Get a new high end door sweep with multiple channels for blocking out the weather.
2. Weather strip – Examine all the jambs and headers to all doors and windows. If you can see light or feel a draft, install new weather striping at all locations. Actually, even if you can’t easily determine if air is getting through or not, it’s still better to be safe than sorry. As a general rule its better to use weather strip where you don’t need it than to not have it where you do need it. Be liberal with weather stripping, it’s cheap.
3. Insulation – Add insulation in the attic above your interior ceiling. Most people don’t stop to realize that the attic isn’t climate controlled. You can keep your home well insulated by separating your homes interior from the attic. Double check attic access areas as well.
4. Caulk all exterior gaps – Walk the exterior of your home. Anywhere you see a place that air can penetrate into your walls, seal it with some exterior high grade caulking. Especially look for areas where there are fixtures such as lights and hose bibs. Even though the air doesn’t penetrate into the house, it will get inside your walls and raise your heating and cooling costs.
5. Pull the drapes closed at night. When its dark outside, there is no reason to leave the drapes open. Pull them closed tight in both summer and winter to stop some of the heat transferring in and out of the windows.

Of course your best bet is to replace your windows and doors completely with new energy efficient windows and doors, but these are minor changes you can make yourself to help keep your home green.