A few of the well-known ways to lower your heating bills include adding more insulation in the ceiling and walls to increase the R-factor and installing double or even triple glazed windows. but what can you do right now to avoid climbing into the attic to add insulation, or going out into the cold to nail an inch or two of frigid insulation to the walls? Heat always flows in the direction of a cold environment, so tracing the heat flow from walls, windows and doors makes a lot of sense of can save a lot of dollars.
How it can be done:
The tool illustrated, a hand-held infrared thermometer (General Tools 7 Instruments IFR 206) measures surfaces temperatures and has a laser beam to show you declining temperature areas. The same technology has been used for decades in the heating and cooling, automotive, electrical, medical industries, and even cooking at home. As an example, body temperature is routinely recorded in medical offices, home owners routinely check oven and griddle temperatures, and also check the refrigerator to make certain the dials are set so the meat drawer is not above 32, and the freezer is minus 4 degrees. Here are three ways to use this tool to lower your heating bills.
Figure A Heat loss Around Windows:
This tool measures surface temperature by aiming it about a foot away from the wall and slowly moving it horizontally toward and over the window. When doing this, the temperature reading zooms down dramatically when the edge of the window frame is reached. If the home is more than fifteen years old, it probably has single pane glass and since wood shrinks and warps, adding weather stripping of any kind is usually an exercise in futility. Your best bet is to cover the entire window frame with clear film that is virtually invisible. Many kits are available, and all use double-faced adhesive tape that can be rolled onto the window casing. After about fifteen minutes, the protective paper on the film is peeled off. Carefully positioning the film over the frame, using a hair dryer, the film is heated. As the film heats, it shrinks and any wrinkles are eliminated. This is not a quick fix for the season; many homeowners leave it in place for the next year and, come springtime, pull the lower half away from the tape to open the window. When the time comes to seal the window again, adding another strip of tape over the original does the job.
Figure B Heat Loss Around Electrical Outlets:
Did you know that electrical outlets are a common path of heat loss? Admittedly, the loss is small, but when you total the number of switches and outlets on an outside wall, heat loss can be meaningful. The answer is to use foam gaskets to seal the outlet. They cost little and are easy to install with a screwdriver.
Figure C Heat Loss Under Entrance Doors:
The front door has always been a major path of heat loss because it is opened and closed repeatedly, and it is constantly subjected to alignment pressures caused by settling foundations, shrinking and warped framing. To solve the drafty problems these conditions create, generations ago a farmer came up with the idea of filling a leg of a Long John underwear with dirt and packing it against the door sill! The entrance door is still a target for innovative ways to slow down heat loss, and we have developed a fast, easy and economical way. We all know flooding, sand bags are used to keep out water. Our way to keep heat in is fill plastic bags with sand and pack them against the door sill. This fast and low cost way is presented in the column Indoor Projects 09-29.
