Is Your Energy Save Leaking Through The Window?

This post is part of the Yakezie blog swap and was written by Jeff from Sustainable Life Blog. If you enjoyed this article, feel free to visit his blog and subscribe by RSS, join the conversation, like him on Facebook or follow him on twitter for the latest from sustainable life blog. 

A lot of times when I’m reading about going green to save money, people suggest things like increasing the temperature of your house in the winter or decreasing the temperature in the summer.

The warmer you keep it in the summer and the lower you keep it in the winter, the lesser you’ll have to work your heater or cooling unit, saving you money on electricity, right? Unfortunately, that may not always be the case.

You could be patting yourself on the back for lowering your energy and consumption by turning down the air conditioning and turning up the heat, but there’s a possibility it could literally be going out the window.

If your house or apartment is poorly insulated, you’ll probably spend quite a bit of money heating or cooling the outside. I’m not sure if you want to be doing this or not, but I haven’t met anyone that was excited when they found out that’s what was happening.

To prevent this, you should first have an energy audit done on your house. (If you’re the DIY type, head over here).

What the energy audit does, is figuring out from where in your house energy is leaking. Common places for us in the past have been at the bottom of doors leading to the outside and window frames.

Once you finish your energy audit, you can decide what you should repair first. I’d repair the smaller things first to knock quite a bit off your list – thinks like caulking gaps in window seals and the like. You can finish up quite a few windows and other things relatively quickly and easily doing that. Keep going on till you are done. If there are too many leaks to seal, hire a professional.

Typically, having some professional do the work for you will be expensive, but you’ll make it up over time with the energy you save. I’d even consider getting your house re-insulated if you really want to keep those energy bills low.

Remember, if you don’t want energy leaking through the doors and windows you have to act now and you wont have to pay for it again!

Readers: How good is the insulation in your home? Does it feel drafty by the windows and doors, and have you considered fixing it yet?

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