THE OTHER LEAKS
You've insulated and caulked, but your house still fills cold and drafty. It's time to inspect bottom plates, electric outlets and switches, beam pockets and junctions, vanities and sinks.
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The energy auditor searches out air leaks by checking likely spots with a smoke pencil.
PHOTOS BY DOUG LEE
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You've insulated and caulked, but your house still
feels cold and drafty. You need to find...
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by Emilie Barton
When the temperature dropped and heating costs
jumped—two signs of fall—you decided to improve
the thermal performance of your home. So to button up your
house, you headed down to the hardware store to buy some of
those do-it-yourself weatherization kits that you'd seen
advertised so widely. You picked up storm windows, rolls of
weather stripping, and tubes of caulk to seal cracks around
doors and windows.
Yet, although you then spent an entire weekend on your
weatherization project, winter has shown you that your
house is still fairly drafty. There must, you reason, be
other places that are letting the north wind blow in.
FINDING THE OTHER LEAKS
According to Carl Ellerbrook, an "energy doctor," 80 to 90%
of the air leaks (called infiltration) in most houses come
from holes that people don't even know about. The average
dwelling has ten or so leakage areas, which may account for
as much as 40% of the home's total heating and cooling
requirements, and those window and door kits you installed
only took care of two of them. To really snuggle
up for the winter, you've got to find the rest of the gaps
in your dwelling's shell.
Ellerbrook's business—through his company, the Sunup
Energy Group Ltd. of Old Snowmass, Colorado—is
finding and sealing the other leaks. To do so, he performs
energy audits using a sophisticated device called a
blower door . This huge fan fits into an exterior
doorway and pressurizes a building to increase the leakage
rate. Then Carl uses a smoke pencil to trace drafts to
their sources. With the blower door and smoke pencil, he
can pinpoint even small leaks.
"Because every house is different," states Carl, "it's nice
to use a blower door and smoke pencil to take the guesswork
out of finding leaks." Still, after several years of
experience with that equipment, Carl has learned where most
of the typical problem areas are in the average home. So
although a competent energy audit is the best way to find
the thermal leaks in your home, checking out Carl's list of
the ten worst offenders will go a long way toward keeping
you cozy when the snow flies.
"You'll find air infiltration anywhere there's penetration
through the inside or outside shells of a building," says
Ellerbrook. Make a complete walk-through inspection of your
house, examining the following areas with particular care.
Then seal each leak from the inside of the house.
Weatherization materials will last much longer indoors,
where they're protected from harsh weather, and moisture
problems within the wall will be avoided.
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