Low Cost Insulation

“The cold night will turne vs all to Fooles, and Madmen.” – William Shakespeare, King Lear

Whether your house is a 500 square foot cabin in the woods or a modern-day mansion, understanding the basics of heating and insulating will help you save money and be more comfortable. In this time when temperature swings from day to night are a constant lived experience, let it not be said that we at Virginia Dwelling aren’t doing all we can to keep temperature-induced madness at bay.

Heating Historic Homes

How to retain heat in Winchester and Shenandoah Valley Historic buildings.

Since permanent structures became a thing, the equation for keeping a home warm in the winter has gone something like this: the colder the temperature outside, the more fuel is burned inside.

Let’s use an example to illustrate: As most Winchester residents know, future first president George Washington was stationed here as a surveyor, overseeing the construction of Fort Loudoun from September 1755 to December 1756.

Growing up with milder low-country winters, we can imagine that Washington was keenly aware of the sometimes wrathful Winchester Winters. Now, if it was a relatively mild day, say forty-five degrees, Washington may have only thrown three or four logs on the fire. Alternatively, if the temperature dropped down to the single digits, he-of-wooden-teeth may have had to put dozens of logs on the fire.

Even with tremendous technological advancements this basic equation has stayed the same over time. In the nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century, the winter-weary would simply shovel more coal into the boiler the colder it got. When fuel was relatively cheap, these spikes in consumption were acceptable.

Rising Fuel Prices and Insulation Levels

Since roughly the end of the Second World War, homes have been built with ever-increasing levels of insulation.

You still may be inclined to turn up the thermostat at a certain point, but the goal nowadays is to keep as much conditioned air in the house as possible.

Door are a good example of this shift in thinking. In George Washington’s day, a primary function of the door was security. If it kept bears, raccoons, and robbers out of the house, it was a good door. Today doors are an integral part of a house’s insulation system, and they need to keep weather and conditioned air in.

The ever-increasing cost of fuel, be it electricity, petroleum based, or carbon based, has created a need for better, more effective insulation systems. As numerous teachers hammered into my addled adolescent mind, the laws of physics don’t change.

The lower the temperature the more fuel is needed. But the more well-sealed a house is, the less money has to be spent on heating.

For instance, furnaces in townhomes from the late 70s or early 80s are often 60-70k BTUs (don’t worry about the unit of measure). In brand new townhomes of the same size, I often see furnaces between 45-60k BTUs. The effectiveness of modern insulation means that smaller units and less fuel can be used where a larger unit and more fuel were needed to overcome poor heat retention.

Modern insulation contractors have all sorts of ways to seal even old homes, built when insulation was almost an afterthought or much lower than modern standards.

Most home owners will recover the investment they make in insulation upgrades, including windows and doors, within a finite amount of time. This said, without having more insulation blown in the attic or replacing the windows, a number of things can be done to help seal your house.

Innumerable studies on home heat loss have been done. Want to spend a week reading about heat loss? You can!

But just in case you don’t, I’ll tell you that air leaks account for somewhere between 15% - 30% of the heat loss in a given home. This of course varies depending on age, condition, and size.

The following are places I frequently find air leaks when I’m inspecting.

What You Can Do To Retain More Heat In Your Home: Air Leaks

Close Your Windows

Seriously. I’m not kidding.

I’d guess that 75% of the houses I inspect have at least one window that isn’t completely shut. Security concerns aside, an open window, obviously, lets conditioned air out.

I believe it is the Second Law of Thermodynamics that describes how different temperatures seek to equalize.

Windows remain open for a number of reasons.

They can get stuck, and even new windows can be difficult to latch.

With double-hung windows the top sash often falls down and nobody notices because it’s behind a curtain or blinds. Even a few millimeters of opening, however, can make a difference. Most of the open windows I find are in seldom used rooms or areas like “guest rooms” that are really just repositories for all the stuff “I just need a chance to sort through” or the basement window behind “all those boxes I’ve been asking your father to move for years”.

The point, of course, is to take fifteen minutes and make sure all your windows are shut.

Also, If you have in-window AC units, removing them while not in use is always a good call.

Check Your Weatherstripping

Do this by looking for daylight and by using your hand to feel for temperature differences. When it drops below freezing you’ll feel the cold air knifing through any gap it can find.

Weatherstripping is relatively cheap and easy to install. The key, as with painting, is good surface preparation. Foam and rubber seals are most effective on smooth, clean surfaces.

Remember, too, that the passage door to the garage or the basement (if unfinished) is an exterior door as well.

More tutorials on installing weatherstripping than you’ll even need can be found on YouTube.

Conditioning Your Fireplace Against The Cold

Ok. Now for a more subtle leak: the fireplace.

Most homes don’t rely on fireplaces as a primary source of heat anymore, meaning that they can go unattended for weeks, months, or even years. Where the firebox (part where the actual fire is) meets the chimney, there should be a damper. The damper is essentially a metal lid on a hinge that gets closed when the fireplace is not in use to keep weather out and conditioned air inside.

I find open dampers all the time.

Last winter, I did a pre-sale inspection for a very nice lady who asked me why her living room was always so cold.

The room had a grand fireplace and, as you can guess, the damper was open – rusted open actually. If I remember correctly, the damper was 24x8”. Make no mistake, a 24x8” hole will let some cold air into a room! Close the damper, and if you have a fireplace that you never use, it might make sense to stuff some insulation under the damper to restrict air-flow even further.

What Is Making The Cold Spots In Historic Homes?

Once upon a time, houses had little to no insulation, windows and doors closed but didn’t seal, and building practices were irregular at best. When the wind blew, the pressure differential exerted on different parts of the house along with the given arrangement of the interior space and the placement of doors and windows created an environment in which drafts could come from all sorts of different spots and shift dramatically.

Instead of air, think for a second about light in a house.

How light is experienced in any given spot is the product of innumerable factors: the angle of the sun, which lights are on and where, what doors are open and how much. From any spot in the house, the light changes as any of these factors does: sometimes gradually, sometimes dramatically.

Now, think of the air in a house.

The movement of air due to interior and exterior forces isn’t that different. Open a window upstairs, you get one draft. Having a poor seal around the front door makes for a different one.

Wait! What about cold spots with no wind!

Well, in the Old Gray House, and perhaps yours, the spotty insulation is partly to blame. For now, the insulation in the attic and walls is irregular at best. The original insulation has broken down unevenly, the additional insulation is erratic, and the first floor floors have no insulation at all.

The most important place to insulate in a house is the attic. Like your head, this is where the most heat gets lost, but insulating the walls and floors is important too. Go outside in shorts, t-shirt, and a really warm hat in the winter and this will suddenly make a lot of sense.

Air Leaks In The Attic

Another sneaky spot where air leaks out is around attic access hatches or, in older homes, doors. With most unconditioned attics the insulation is between the rafters / trusses and the ceiling below. This makes the hatch a hole in that layer of insulation.

The way to address this is by insulating the attic side of the hatch and installing weather stripping around the lip where the hatch sits – essentially you treat the hatch as an exterior door.

These are easy, cheap or free things that can be done to seal up your house.

Insulation contractors and window / door contractors are usually needed to thoroughly upgrade a house’s insulation system. But, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, arresting air movement is central to insulating.

Without openings to the exterior, the air movement in the house will decrease. This will, in turn, help keep heated air in the house.

Serving Loudoun County, Frederick County, and Shenandoah County Home buyers