With the autumnal equinox – the official start of fall – now past, temperatures across the country are finally beginning to cool down following the hottest summer on record.
While the mild weather between summer’s heat and winter’s chill is here, it’s an ideal time to enhance your home’s energy efficiency, particularly with the tax credits now available. There are many ways to lower your home’s energy use, but one tried-and-true way (and one that you can do yourself) is weatherization, the process of protecting your home against the elements.
To get started, it’s recommended to first get an energy audit, which will help you understand where your home is wasting energy, and you can currently get up to 30 percent of the cost covered.
In this month’s blog, we look at three ways to weatherize your home before winter:
1. Stop leaks around doors and windows with weather-stripping.
Weather-strips are an easy starting project in weatherizing your home. These strips, which can be purchased from any home improvement store or big-box retailer, can be applied to all the doors and windows around your house. As a rule of thumb, if light shines through the cracks around doors and windows, air is leaking out as well. By sliding a rubber stop into the crack, you can save energy and improve the comfort of your home. Don’t forget to apply weather-strips to your attic entrance and fireplaces too – heat rises and can easily slip through these openings.
2. Seal smaller gaps and cracks with caulk.
Next, caulk can be easily applied to cracks and small gaps in the structure of your home. Caulk can be used on heating ducts, leaking water pipes and window frames on the outward facings of your windows. By applying this material to gaps and cracks within your home, you can seal in your heating and cool air. Though it may seem insignificant to fill in the cracks on your home, sealing a drafty home can save you 20 percent or more on heating or cooling.
3. Keep your home the right temperature with insulation.
Finally, if you come across a gap or crack that is too large for caulk, you may want to use insulation instead. Since attics are the top source of energy loss in American homes, applying insulating materials around heating ducts and the floor of your attic can keep the hot and cool air where you want it and really help cut down on your energy expenses. Installing insulation in an attic is relatively inexpensive and easy to do yourself – but make sure you have a respirator before starting.
Weatherization is one of the best, most cost-effective investments you can make in your home. Once these relatively minor projects are completed, they will continue to pay dividends on your energy bills and home comfort for years to come and will set you up to make more significant energy improvements, like installing a smart thermostat, a new HVAC system or solar panels.
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