If you live in an area where you have big weather shifts from summer to winter, it can be very helpful for you to adequately weatherize your home so you can keep it cool during the summer and warm during the winter.
To show you how you can do this, and how you can save yourself some money along the way, here are three tips for weatherizing your home.
Focus On Insulation and Moisture Control
One of the first and best things you can do to weatherize your home, according to Energy.gov, is to make sure you have enough insulation throughout your home as well as a way to control moisture. Without these two things, it will be easy for outside air and moisture to penetrate your walls as well as the foundation of your home.
If areas like your attic don’t have enough insulation, it’s easy enough to get some more and put it in the spaces that are lacking. You can also get thick drapes or other coverings for your windows to insulate those areas as well. And as for the moisture, make sure you have proper ventilation throughout your home to eliminate excess moisture and combat things like mold and mildew as well as cracks in the structure of your home.
Use Your Doors As Protection
In addition to using drapes to cover your windows as a form of weatherizing your home, you should also ensure that air from outside isn’t creeping into your home from around your doors either.
Especially with your exterior doors, you want to make sure that they’re sealed tight so now outside air can seep in through any cracks. If you do find any cracks or spaces around your exterior doors, This Old House recommends that you put on weather stripping or other sealing features to make sure no air can get in or out around the door.
Don’t Let Air Through Your Outlets
Along with air being able to seep into your home around your exterior doors, Joseph Truini, a contributor to Popular Mechanics, you should also seal off around the outlets of your home so that no air can come through there either.
If left untreated, you can lose a significant amount of air to the small open spaces around your electrical outlets. Because of this, you should install rubber gaskets around your outlets to keep the air exactly where you want it. And because these rubber gaskets are easy to use, you can install and remove them as you see fit as the seasons change around the year.
If you’re needing to weatherize your home but aren’t sure where to start, consider using the tips mentioned above to make a plan for your home.