Along with weatherstripping, caulking is one of two essential techniques for sealing air leaks in your home. It is ideal for sealing gaps that don’t open and shut - for instance, where your fireplace or an air vent is built into the wall. It works best where cracks or gaps are less than ¼ inch wide. Caulking consists of applying a thick substance called caulk directly over gaps. The substance soon dries, forming an airtight barrier between the inside and outside. As an added bonus, caulking will also help prevent moisture from seeping into your home, which will help keep mold out, and it can be an effective barrier against insects.

Weatherstripping is an ideal solution to air leaks at the edges of windows and doors. Affixing a material to the space between door and window closures, or on their sides, can stop the leaks. There are many different types of weather-stripping materials; foam, felt, metal and vinyl are the common ones.

When you conduct over 3000 Home Energy Audits per year you’re bound to run into some interesting opinions. Many people believe certain things about home energy consumption that are just not true. These “Energy Myths” have often been inherited from one generation to the next. “Grandma always said…” is the typical preface to many of these energy myths. But a whole lot has changed in the last 50-100 years that makes grandma’s recommendations obsolete. Sorry Grandma. So after hearing many different Energy Myths from many different energy customers, the staff of Conservation Consultants got together and compiled some of the most common ones into a list of… drum roll please…

The following forms of insulation are less commonly used than fiberglass and cellulose, but this doesn’t mean they’re less desirable. Most offer unique advantages over more traditional insulation, although they may have higher initial costs or other drawbacks as well. We urge you to consider them and make the decision that works best for your home, your finances and your environmental commitment.

Foamed insulation is a bit expensive initially, but lasts longer and insulates better than others. It is made of various materials in their liquid states, and can be sprayed, injected or poured into the building envelope. Because foamed insulation can be made of many different materials, its R-values vary widely, from around 3 to at least 8.

An essential component of conserving energy is keeping conditioned air in your house and keeping unconditioned air out, meaning that in the winter hot air doesn’t escape and in the summer cool air doesn’t escape. Insulation plays a role in keeping your house warm too, but regular fiberglass insulation does not stop the flow of air. Typically insulation is effective at preventing heat transfer through materials (limiting your home’s ability to conduct heat), it cannot prevent air from actually sneaking in and out through holes and cracks. (The exception to this is sprayed-in Cellulose and some foam insulations that can both air seal and insulate)

Weatherization experts, those friendly folks that insulate and air seal homes, have developed several tools to aid them in diagnosing air leakages in a home. A blower door test is just such a diagnostic tool; this specific test artificially creates a vacuum between your home and the outside, which causes a pressure difference between the two areas. To begin the test, the weatherization technician will first close all exterior doors and windows in the home and will then set up a large fan in the front door of the house. This fan faces outside and is sealed on all sides to the edge of the door with small hoses running both outside and inside to measure the air pressure. When the fan has created a pressure difference of 50-pascals in cubic feet per minute (CFM) the airflow through the fan is then measured. This number can be translated into a ‘level of leakage,’ which tells a weatherization expert how much air sealing needs to be done. The harder it is to pull air through the fan the harder it is to pull extra air through exterior cracks or holes, which means the house is at a lower level of leakage.