Ask Construction Advice.com No charge construction advice for all remodeling advice ... free remodeling advice on any project you may have. Insulation and Caulking Energy Efficiency
To further conserve energy, seal up your house. Inside you home, check for cracks around windows, gaps between your wall and flooring, and near your electrical outlets. Use caulk and caulk gun using matching caulk colors to seal minor gaps. If you use silicon, beware that you can not paint over it well. Use a friendly paintable caulking compounds. Look at and check the weather striping around all doors and windows checking for fit. Outside your home check around your windows for spaces and leaks. If your house is extremely old and drafty, have someone hold a light up to expose smaller gaps. Check electrical outlets and plumbing pipes as they come out the walls for gaps. A simple fix is to use expanding foam to fill them in the openings if they are large. Otherwise use caulk. While you’re at it clean your air ducts if you have them. A good air duct cleaning will increase flow and efficiency of your duct system throughout the house. Make sure you have a professional clean and inspect your heating (or cooling) unit before each new winter. We generally wait 2-years between inspections because he generally does not pull much soot out and it burns quite clean but the boiler guy will tell you once a year. Another cost saving tip is to insulate your water heater and pipes wherever you find them exposed. When it's cold outside, your water heater works harder to get water hot and keep it hot. You can purchase insulation kits so you are able to wrap insulating blankets around your water heater and insulation wraps for your water pipes. That will prevents heat loss and helps give you greater energy efficiency. Be careful NOT to cover up anything close to flames or any air vents. |
|||
Construction Advice
Pavers |
Home Improvement, Remodeling, Building Advice ©2006
AskConstructionAdvice.com. All Rights Reserved