COUNTRY SKILLS

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To reduce infiltration, seal the house. To reduce radiant and convection heat loss, impose energy barriers between living spaces and the outside—i.e., insulate. To complicate matters, you need to keep humidity in during winter and out during summer. However, you must prevent it from condensing inside cold wall surfaces, which rots wood and soaks insulation, rendering it ineffective. Install a vapor barrier between living space and insulation.

Imagine the house as a series of shells enclosing the living space: warm inner wall, vapor barrier, house framing, insulation, cold house siding—and between vapor barrier and siding, a constant flow of air to evacuate humidity.

Controlling Infiltration

Even the gentlest wind will create a vacuum on the house's lee side, sucking out house air through any opening. A contractor or electric utility can photograph areas of heat loss using infrared film or electronic sensors. They are especially helpful in identifying hidden leaks in log house chinking or joints in brick or stone buildings—both curable by caulking. (For more on insulating your log cabin, see issue #128, Oct/Nov '91, p. 46.) But you can locate or preempt leaks in a frame house by using a little common sense.

Our 200-year-old house sits on a dry-laid (mortarless) stone foundation. Last summer, I went down to a darkened cellar and was surprised to find sunlight glinting through a dozen leaks. I plugged them with a silicone rubber—a caulklike adhesive that will remain flexible for decades. (I avoid liquid styrene plastic "super caulk" that sticks to anything and will remain flexible indefinitely. It contains toluene, a substance that has scrambled the brains of more than one young "paint-sniffer:')

Then I ran a 48"-wide roll of four-millimeter-thick, black plastic-mulch sheeting around the foundation. I stapled the top to the clapboard siding three feet above ground level and then secured it with inexpensive wood lath along top and bottom, spacing it vertically every six feet. I laid the bottom foot of sheeting flat along the ground and placed old hay bales up against foundation and sill.

This combination diminishes the wind's vacuum effect and keeps out snow that may drift against the house, melt, and seep in. Soaked insulation will rot the sill or freeze and heave the foundation. Next spring I'll remove and store the plastic and use the hay for garden mulch.

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