Energy efficiency - draught proofing the house..

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As the temperature dips and the wind starts howling, our house is increasingly getting colder. The place is a bit like a sieve and I am trying to plug whatever I can. Its only our second winter here, so still discovering things. I know some of the big areas where we are losing heat or letting the air come in. However there seems to some more tiny ones that I cant find easily. Is there an easy DIY way of locating these draught?
 
Oops, I was trying to get to a golf forum and ended up on a building one instead :eek:
 
normally anything connected to external, so gaps between front and back door and door frames (can get brushes or draught excluder for the bottom), check window seals. Fireplace, we have a gas fire but still get a lot of draught coming through the flue, plugged it up with plastic bags for now. Check your insulation in the loft as heat rises, if there isnt enough insulation in the loft it will just go out the roof. I've just topped one side of our loft up with 150mm space blanket over the bedroom. We also have a garage attached to the house which is under out bedroom 2 (study), as we have rabbits in the garage at night ive put some insulation board on the garage door and you can really tell the difference.
 
There may be clever ways, on tv they use infrared to show heat, but something simple like dropping a feather or paper will show where things are blowing around. Pretty much any crack, under doors, around windows etc are a starting point. Simple things like keeping doors closed, trapping heat doesn't half help. If the house is old then draughts may come up through the floorboards. That is trickier to resolve.

Is the house an old one? What do you think are the weaknesses, ignoring the obvious?
 
Having lived, coming up to 30 years in the same house, I think I've got the draughts more or less 'sorted'...


Best indicator, for me, over the years has been when the lady of the house has indicated she can feel a draught...
I've leapt up and dealt with it as soon as ;)....

Sorry, not much help with the technicalities of draught eradication :(...
 
Lord Tyrion said:
There may be clever ways, on tv they use infrared to show heat, but something simple like dropping a feather or paper will show where things are blowing around. Pretty much any crack, under doors, around windows etc are a starting point. Simple things like keeping doors closed, trapping heat doesn't half help. If the house is old then draughts may come up through the floorboards. That is trickier to resolve.

Is the house an old one? What do you think are the weaknesses, ignoring the obvious?
Click to expand...

60s house. and there are a few single glazed door/windows.
The loft is sorted and the chimney is blocked. I suspect that we got leaky floorboards and might have some failed double glazings, but cant find where these are. bloody irritating..
 
It's also helpful if the entire floor (either ground or upper) is kept at pretty much the same temperature!

There's nothing that promotes the creation of draughts better than the (frequently old people's) habit of only heating 1 or 2 rooms and keeping the doors closed in the others! The greater the temperature difference, the greater the draught! An exception is possibly if there is a door that divides a lower floor from a, more often/generally used, upper one. In that case keeping that door closed can save energy and reduce draughts.

Admit that you will never (nor should) draught-proof the entire house (it has to 'breathe') and focus on keeping the temperature differences to a minimum! This is the only reason, apart from convenience, that I could think of for professionally fitted radiators being under windows!

Oh! We also installed radiator covers (quite an expensive exercise) but that also reduced draughts!

Double glazing and ceiling insulation does help too btw.
 
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