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Air leaks are the greatest cause of heating and cooling loss in the home. Air leaks result from small cracks around doors, windows, pipes, and other locations. Most homeowners know that caulk and weather-stripping minimize heat loss and cold drafts, and keep cool air from escaping when the air conditioning is on

However, there are four LARGE openings which are often overlooked:

Attic Stairs

When attic stairs are installed, a large hole (approx 12 feet square) is created in your ceiling. The ceiling and insulation that were formerly there have been removed, and only a thin unsealed sheet of plywood remains.

Your attic space ventilates directly outdoors. The attic space can be very cold in the winter, and very hot in summer. And only a very thin (unsealed) leaking sheet of plywood is letting all that drafty cold (or hot) air in!

A gap can be observed around the perimeter of the door. At night, turn on the attic light and shut the attic stairway door and see the light coming through! These gaps you see add up to a large opening allowing heated/cooled air leaks 24 hours a day. This is like an open window all year round.

The easy, low-cost solution is to add an attic stair cover, which provides an air seal, and stops the air leaks. You can also add extra insulation over the cover to restore the insulation removed from the ceiling if you want.

Whole-House Fans

Just like attic stairs above, installing a whole-house fan requires cutting a large hole (up to 15 square feet or bigger) into your ceiling. When the ceiling and insulation are removed to install the whole-house fan, leaving only a leaky airway between the house and the outdoors. And air leaks are not good.

An easy, low-cost solution is to add a whole house fan cover. The fan cover is installed from the attic side, and is invisible from the outside. The fan cover reduces heating and air-conditioning loss, and can be removed when the fan is put into operation again. If attic access is inconvenient, a ceiling shutter cover is another option for reducing heat loss. The ceiling shutter is made from thin-textured R-8 white flexible insulation. Because it is installed using Velcro from the house outside, a whole-house fan cover is easily installed and removed.

Fireplaces

65 percent, or approx 100 million homes in North America are constructed with wood- or gas-burning fireplaces. Unfortunately, there are negative side effects that the fireplace brings to a home especially during the winter home-heating season. Fireplaces are energy wasters.

Experts have concluded that a huge amount of heat (or cooling) loss occurs through an unlit fireplace. One study demonstrated that an open damper on an unlit fireplace, in a well-insulated house, can raise overall heating-energy consumption by 30 percent.

Another recent study showed that heating bills may be at least $500 higher every winter due to the air leakage caused by fireplaces.

A home with a fireplace has higher heating bills, and here is why: hot air rises. Your heated air leaks out any exit it can find, and when your heated air is drawn out of your home, cold outside air is drawn in (recall thermodynamics and entropy from high-school physics?). The fireplace is like a giant straw sucking the heated air from your house!

A low-cost solution to this problem is installing a fireplace draft-stopper. A fireplace draft-stopper is an inflatable pillow installed into the fireplace below the damper. As the pillow is inflated, it seals the damper, eliminating any air leaks and heat loss. Other benefits include the reduction of downdrafts, toxins, odors, pollutants, and noise. The pillow is removed whenever the fireplace is used, then reinserted after. Completely reusable and available in multiple sizes to fit any masonry or zero-clearance fireplace, a draft-stopper can pay for itself in less than a month!

Exhaust Ducts from the Clothes Dryer

The room with the clothes dryer in it is sometimes the coldest room in the house. Reason: your clothes dryer connects to an exhaust duct that opens to the outdoors. In the winter, cold air leaks in through the duct, through your dryer and into your house.

In most houses, a dryer vent consisting of a sheet-metal flapper is used to try to reduce this air leakage. This is very primitive technology which fails in providing a positive seal, and fails to stop the air leakage. Compounding the problem is that over time, lint clogs the flapper valve causing it to stay open, or a cold breeze can blow the flapper open, allowing frigid air right to come right into the house.

The low-cost solution is to add a dryer vent seal. This easily-installed vent is mounted outside the house, and minimizes unwanted air infiltration. It also keeps out pests, like bees and rodents too. The vent remains closed unless the dryer is in use. When the dryer is in use, a floating shuttle rises to allow warm air, lint and moisture to escape.

If your home has a folding attic stair, a whole house fan, a fireplace, and/or a clothes dryer, you can easily, quickly and inexpensively seal and insulate these holes.