Following up yesterday’s post on Air Sealing, let’s look at air sealing for existing homes and new construction.

Air Sealing an Attic Knee Wall

Air Sealing An Existing Home

One of the best things that you can do when winterizing your home is air sealing. This can help you make the energy in your home more efficient. Not only will you have a decrease in your energy costs, but you will feel more comfortable in your home.
Prior to starting the air sealing process, make sure that you look for air leaks and check to see what your needs are for ventilation in your home.

Air Sealing With A New Home (Whole-House Systems Approach)

When a new home is being built, the plans and details have to be properly executed. With a whole-house systems approach, there will be a plan in place on how to make your new home energy efficient. With this new approach, the building of your new home and the climate are included in the process of energy efficiency.
You will also need to include these components in this approach for your new home:

• Appliances
• Air Sealing
• Insulation
• Lighting
• Water heating
• Doors
• Windows

The builders and designers know that it only takes one of these components to affect other components of this system. However, they all have a part to play with the energy efficiency of your new home.
You will greatly benefit from using a whole-house systems approach by:

• Being more comfortable in your home
• Dealing with less noise in your home
• Having an environment that is healthy and safe
• Having lower energy bills

The whole-house systems approach is made to work with all home designs. If you want to be more creative, you can have a home designed and built that creates its own electricity.

Where it’s an old or new home, air sealing can’t take the place of having proper insulation in your home. This is important because you need insulation in your home in order to keep the heat in your inside. To strengthen the work of air sealing, you can also include caulking and weather-stripping.

Air Sealing your home

Air sealing is one of the ways to help keep heat in your home and also reduce your energy costs. You will be more comfortable in your home having more heat from doing this process. Prior to doing this, you should look for air leaks and determine your needs for ventilation in order to satisfy the air quality inside of your home.

The infiltration of air happens when air from the outside comes in your house and it cannot be controlled. This usually happens by the way of openings and cracks that you may not know about at the time.
Once you seal those openings and cracks in your home you can decrease your heating costs which will of course, reduce your heating bill. Doing this will also create a healthy environment inside your home.

Using ventilation for air leakage is not a good source to depend on because it is uncontrollable. When the weather is cold or windy, a lot of air can come through the home. The infiltration of air can also cause issues with the control of moisture. When that happens, mold can form inside of your home. Living with mold can eventually cause health issues, such as asthma.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss sealing both an existing home and Whole-House Systems Approach when constructing a new home.