Winterizing help needed please

[Mind_your_head]

I live in a 40 year old house. Most everything in it is, unfortunately, original 1968. I know I need new doors, windows, and insulation/siding, but don't have the money for any of that :-(

The house has always been very cold/drafty, but last winter we had a week of particularly bad bitter cold. Well with that bitter cold, I could REALLY feel where many of the worst drafts were coming from ~ around the doors, around most of the baseboards and from the corners near the fireplace. Btw, it's true of all the rooms, but the room with the fireplace has two outside walls - north and west facing - and sits on a slab, whereas the rest of the house has a basement. This one room is the WORST!

Anyway, in my panic and frustration imagining my heating bill skyrocketing, I took duct tape and taped around all of the baseboards/corners/doors - and it helped enormously - the drafts were THAT BAD.

Winter will be here before we know it, is there anything I can do to help minimize the drafts/keep the heat it? Or will I be stuck looking at duct tape on my walls, baseboards, and back doors/windows again this winter?

Oh, one more bit of information - the outside wall with the fireplace - at ground level there is dirt/a small garden bed there. I was thinking of shooting some kind of foam in there at the base, but I don't think that will work with it being dirt there.

Thanks in advance for any help advice,
M_Y_H

[Stinky The Clown]

1. I won't even get into the 'why' of the drafts .... but you might try this .....

..... remove the baseboard moldings and try to insulate behind them. Once removed, what you **should* see is the base/sole plate (a 2x4 laying on its side) sitting on the concrete slab. The wall studs stand on edge on top of that. The wallboard should stop about a half inch above the slab. That gap is what you want to insulate. The gap is important. It keeps the wallboard off the slab and allows the house to 'move' without cracking the walls. But soft insulation put in there will not cause any harm and should stop your draft.

Note that sometimes this gap is quite large ..... even to the point of fully exposing the sole plates and making the very bottom of the studs visible. That's just lesser quality workmanship, but no cause for panic. The fix is still the same .... insulate the gap.

You could use pink fiberglass insulation cut into strips to stuff in there or you could use that foam stuff in a can. The foam is spendy, to start, and also is a little problematic. It is very hard to control the thickness and any cured foam that stands proud of the wall will have to be trimmed off before the baseboards go back on.

Apart from a full insulation job, this should be a permanent repair for you ..... and quite cheap to do. One roll of insulation will likely do your entire house. the rest of the cost is your labor and the nails, putty, and paint to reinstall, patch and repaint the baseboards.

[Mind_your_head]

3. Thanks Husb2Sparkly for the reply

And a very good explanation. I can imagine/visualize the gap you are describing behind that baseboard (if the uninsulated gap is truly there, which it probably is considering how much cold air was coming through the floor/baseboard area last winter).

Thanks again!

[Warpy]

7. Other holes to plug are behind electrical wall plates

They sell plastic insulation cut to fit and you don't need to shut the power off. Just take off the plate, put the insulation in, and screw the plate back on.

Window drafts can be cut considerably by heavy drapes. You can make your own, find them at thrift shops, or just bite the bullet and buy them retail. Not only do they add to the look of the room, they save you money year round as they block heat loss in winter and solar heat in summer. Adding a cornice at the top will double their insulating power by stopping convection drafts completely.

Rope caulk around windows is a cheap and temporary solution to actual drafts on windy days. It's a cheap, flexible rope of malleable goo you jam into the cracks. When you open the windows next spring, you take it out and discard it.

Door sweeps are another cheap fix, a length of metal with a rubber flap that closes any gap under an exterior door.

There are a lot of cheap fixes out there that don't require new insulation or new windows and doors.

[Jersey Devil]

2. Your fireplace - masonry?

If so, it sounds like there probably is no caulking between the masonry and the siding on your home if you are feeling drafts around the exterior borders of the fireplace. That can be easily caulked from the outside in all areas where the masonry meets the siding.

What husb2sparkly says sounds good, but maybe there is something even simpler that will solve your problem. Is there corner molding under your baseboard where the wall meets the floor? If not, buy some, install it and you are done.

Windows and doors - Of course install weatherstripping, but besides that, drafty windows and doors are often caused by failure to insulate around them( assuming your walls are insulated to begin with and if not, then you have a much bigger problem). Carefully and gently remove the wood molding around a door or window with a putty knife. If painted you may have to score the joints with a razor knife first. Then look at the areas around the door/window and see if they were ever insulated. If not, stuff fiberglass insulation in the spaces between the door/window frames and the studs next to them and then replace the molding. After doing that and with proper weatherstripping your doors should be draft free.

[Mind_your_head]

4. Yes, the fireplace is brick

I'll go and check the caulking outside around the fireplace tomorrow (it's dark here now). I guess the caulking gets old and cracks off/splits, right? I didn't think about that. So perhaps it once was caulked and now it needs to be done again? Or maybe it was never done? Thanks for the tip to take a good look at the caulk and it's condition.

What's the difference between corner molding and baseboard? I thought they were same thing and a quick google seems to support my thinking on that (Bob Vila couldn't be wrong, could he? :shrug:) Yes there is wooden corner molding/baseboard where the floor meets the wall. I still felt a lot of cold draft last winter and taping the bottom of the baseboard to the carpet helped IMMENSELY to curtail a lot of that draft (but it's a temporary and ugly/unsightly solution as you can imagine). I think Husb2Sparkly may be 'on to something' about my having an insulation gap at the bottom of the wallboard.

Windows and doors - yeah, where to begin....

Well, when I first moved into this house, I knew I couldn't do everything or even very much ~ but the 1968 panelling in the family HAD TO GO!!! So all of the panelling was torn off, which took the wallboard with it. There was new insulation put in the walls, but it was 'not the best', only 'good enough' (there's a whole 'nother stupid story there, but I digress...), then new wallboard was put up with the molding at the floor. I know that the insulation put in the wall, which was a vast improvement from what was originally there, was not the greatest - only adequate. I'm not sure if they insulated as you describe around the doors/windows (or the bottom gap). I'm betting now, that it's likely they didn't do a good job - I can 'feel' that there are significant leaks, after all. Guess I'll have to take a look and see! Thanks for describing how I'll have to 'take a look' at that, and how to better insulate.

Thanks for all the great thoughts/tips.

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

5. Duct tape, it's amazing what you can do with it!

You were thinking fast and the idea worked. I would call that a experiment. Good that you are thinking about winterizing now rather than waiting until the end of September. A number of my people are calling me about that the last week or so.

You are going to become a expert at caulking . You will want to look at all the windows on the outside of your house , look for the caulked areas ,cracks and so fourth.You will re caulk those areas.

The exterior doors, of course weather stripping. There may be some caulking on the outside,the casing .

The worst room, is there wall to wall carpet? Or is it hard wood floors?
You want to caulk at the bottom of the base boards and maybe the top as well. Basically any place there is a air gap ,cold air will get in. You must simply seal the gaps, which happens to be just what you did with the duct tape.Nobody will see the caulk.

So, you are going to caulk all around the base boards all over the house. The fire place too. Where the fire place meets the walls and floor.
And you are going to learn how to do it the same way the pro's do. That means it will look perfect.

Talk about removing base board and fixing the problem, thats what I do for a living!

But this is winterizing, And those are the kinds of jobs that bring me back year after to all the old house's I have remodeled over the years!
I've seen a lot of kids grow up in those old houses too!

So Jersey Devil again, it's caulking ! That's funny to me because one of my clients who called about winterizing who happens to be a lawyer just yesterday. He is a old client and friend who lives in a sixties built house ! He took apart a furnace pump motor and needs it put back together or replaced and some other things along the lines of winterizing before his wife kicks his ass!

But hay, that's the job! Their daughter will be in college next year, she was just a baby when I started. Doesn't time fly?

Good luck.

Ask about anything.

[trotsky]

6. Window plastic, weather stripping.

3M makes these kits that are large sheets of clear plastic, like thick cellophane. You put double-stick tape around the frame of your window (you can buy kits for inside or outside mounting), attach the plastic, trim to fit, then use a hairdryer to sort of shrink-wrap the plastic. Takes out the wrinkles. Cheapest way to completely seal drafty windows. Careful with certain kinds of wood trim - the double-stick tape can sometimes pull up a layer of paint or poly.

Weather stripping on the inside of the door frame.

And also, did you notice drafts coming from the outlets or light switches? They sell little foam rectangles with punchouts for outlets and switches - you pop the cover, put the foam in, then put the cover back on. Blocks the draft, permanent, and invisible.

[eleny]

8. My 2 cents

A heavier drape for chilly windows. I found heavy drapery sets and put them on 3 windows on the north side of the house. They make quite a difference at night. Our house is late 1940s but we changed the windows to double paned. Even so, the drapes helped even more on the north facing windows.

I'm thinking of comfort already, too. We've even had several 100+ degree days here in July west of Denver. But today only hit maybe 60 degrees and it's going to be like this and rainy for the rest of the weekend. I'm taking stock of what I need to do for winter. I like uncovered windows. But our power company is asking a 19% rate increase for natural gas. So I'm firing up the sewing machine and will be making kitchen and laundry room cafe curtains to pull closed at least at night.

Have you seen those draft snakes for door drafts like this one?
http://www.amazon.com/tag/draft%20snake/products
You can make one easily from a rolled up towel if you need a last minute fix. They work well to stop drafts on window sills as well. If made from other fabric they can be stuffed with old fabric, tee shirts, socks, old towels, whatever is handy.

Good luck with everything!

[LiberalEsto]

9. I've got a 1967 house

and I've got some similar issues, so it was great to see the advice posted on this thread.

Here are the 2 things I plan to do over the next couple of months:

Install a fireplace plug -- because I can feel the draft from it even with the damper closed.

http://www.batticdoor.com/fireplacedraftstopper.html


I'm also going to paint some interior walls and the outside foundation walls with this ceramic paint additive that sounds promising:

http://hytechsales.com/

[NMDemDist2]

10. thanks for that paint additive link

that looks like something I need