How to Insulate Your Home for Winter

Insulating your home for winter is a job that you should do and a job that you can do. There are numerous ways to insulate your home from professional installation of ceiling and wall insulation to just trying to plug up the leaks yourself. We are going to cover the latter method. This article is designed for little (or no) expense insulation to reduce the costs of heating your home. With rising energy prices, even plugging up the smallest leak can result in a noticeable amount of savings over the winter months. Plus, the better insulated your home is, the less energy that you will use that causes pollution.

While numerous products can be purchased to help insulate your home for winter, it isn’t entirely necessary. While spray foam is great, stuffing holes with scraps of cloth or Styrofoam and backed with cardboard makes an effective air barrier as well. If you have numerous holes that need filled I would recommend a can of the spray foam for time and convenience, but it is not an absolute need. For optimum effectiveness use the spray foam per the can’s directions. Just a small dab of foam will grow to a very large size! After the foam hardens simply cut it with a razor knife or similar tool to make a more aesthetically pleasing look.

Finding holes to fill shouldn’t be hard. Look for light shining through the walls inside during the day or light shining outside during the night. On cold winter nights walk around in shorts and a tee shirt (or naked, I won’t tell) and you’ll certainly find cold drafts. Find these areas and insulate them however you can. Areas under doors can be controlled with a rolled up towel or rug over the opening. If the drafts around doors are especially bad consider purchasing foam insulation made to stop the draft in this area. An easy way to deal with this is to place masking tape over the cracks around the door each night, but this can be a pain.

An old fashioned way to deal with the winter cold around poorly sealed or insulated windows is to cover them with plastic sheeting. I place one layer up against the window and another layer over the entire window opening. Very little cold air will get through the window and the two layers of plastic no matter how hard the wind blows on those cold nights.

Another great way to insulate and save money in the winter is to insulate your body. Wear sweaters, sweat pants, socks and slippers in your home and just let it be cold!

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