I posted before about new windows - which we still haven’t done yet -but will hopefully do soon. It takes us a while to get home projects done.
Anyway the house we are in now is fairly new to us but was built in 2004. It is all vinyl exterior. I feel like the exterior walls may be poorly insulated . For example the kitchen cabinets (which are on an exterior wall) are cold and you feel a small draft when you open them.
My question how to go about getting more insulation for the exterior walls? Do I hire an insulation company? or is this something a handy man will do? The siding looks fine would they just take it down and put it back?
Also in the meantime would love to hear about any other little things you did to block drafts in your house. Was thinking of getting one of those snake things to put in front of the door.
if you are going to get insulation blown into your walls…hire an insulation company.
If you are putting rolled insulation in you attic…a handyman…or even you…could do that.
But first…check with your utility company. Our electric company does FREE energy audits and gives suggestions on what you need to do to conserve energy. Start there.
Many years ago when we first bought our house we added insulation to our attic and it helped a lot to keep it warmer in winter and cooler in summer so it’s worth checking if the insulation in your attic is adequate if you have one.
I have seen recommendations for having insulation blown into the exterior walls but don’t know how effective it is.
Our house is drafty from the windows and hopefully we’ll be able to replace them some day.
We also got new good quality storm doors and had a company put some kind of flashing around the exterior doors that improved the seal and that helped quite a bit.
We consulted a company with genuine expertise that did many forms of insulation, a step which I would highly recommend. Their focus was on finding what would save us money in our particular situation. If you hire someone who does one kind of insulation, say foam or blown in, that is what they will recommend, whether it is the best for your situation or not.
The company sent a senior person who went around the house viewing the walls with in infrared camera. (This shows where your wall insulation may be lacking.) He inspected the basement and the attic and the windows and doors, etc. His ultimate recommendation was, to our surprise, not that we blow more insulation into the walls–he said that was pretty well covered–but that we have the sill and chases foamed and blow more insulation under the attic floor, where it had settled significantly. They also cut insulation panels fr the cellar windows and door, and foamed them into place. This was to stop the chimney effect inside the house. We also got new storms for all of the windows–I refused to consider replacing the windows in our house, which is 100+ years old–and removed the window weights and had the weight pockets stuffed with insulation.
The result was an immediate 30% decrease in annual oil usage.
BTW, the head of this company, with whom I talked at length, used to do energy audits for the state. He had been in the field for 20-30 years at that time. He was NOT a fan of blower doors, especially for old houses, for two reasons. He said that the blower door does not accurately reflect how the house performs in the real world. Our prevailing winds are from the west, the blower door mimics a situation in which the wind blows from all directions simultaneously, which never happens. He said that in old houses the blower door stirs up every speck of old dust and debris in every crack, including lead particles, and puts it in the air. YMMV, of course.
A smart thermostat makes a big difference too, assuming that you are not home most of the time. One downside to sealing your house is that you trap pollutants indoors. Sometimes a small draft is not so bad, especially on newer homes. Old homes leak so much it rarely makes much of a a difference.
Oh, Consolation, same issue here, the insulation work not yet done, but the audit and recommendations in. And the boiler burner is cobbled together.
Right now, no one is recommending we get a smart thermostat. Not where it gets so cold. The wisdom seems to be that a large setback only makes the heating work that much harder to bring the house to the desired temp later. We’re being told maintaining a constant, for the most part, is more efficient. I don’t have my head wrapped around that yet, but you can check.
NYS also has some energy audit programs as does Con Ed. If your attic isn’t insulated that’s usually the number one recommendations. Often there’s a lot of leakage around electric sockets even if the walls themselves are insulated. We put in an addition with foam insulation and also took the walls and ceiling off my horribly cold home office (it was probably originally a porch) and it’s made a huge difference for us even though the main house is still woefully underinsulated.
We have an old house, and the HDLC will not allow replacement windows for the ones facing the street. These are old single pane divided lite double hung windows and they’re huge. We hired a window preservationist and she removed the bottom sashes, routed them out along the sides, and put in integral weatherstripping. More integral weatherstripping where the sashes meet so we feel no drafts (although the panes still feel cold). So glad we did this earlier in December!
She also went to work on all the doors with similar small fixes that made a big difference.
Check your outlets. One of ours was cold and drafty feeling and we had it insulated right there.
