Air Sealed the house

[ALS]

I've owned my 1960 multi-level since 2011 and estimated, that if I had air sealed this house back in 2012 I'd have saved $2500-$3,000 on my electric and gas bills. The original owners lost their butts on the utility bills in this house. I'll never forget what the son said to me at the closing, My Mom Could Never Get Warm In That House.

When I first moved in I found a number of things that were causing the high utility bills, corrected them and that made a big difference. What I found this spring and summer while air sealing the house had me saying, I want to beat the builder and the homeowners senseless, more times than I can remember. Lots of hidden holes and openings that should have been sealed and some of the larger ones had insulation stuffed in them. It's not what you see but what you can't, that is costing you money.

Air Sealing is the best time and money invested solution to a high utility cost problem. I can't understand why more people don't do it. Oh because they don't want you to know. The scams run on home owners that don't know about air sealing are unending. If Insulation companies advertised air sealing as much as the replacement window companies do, and explained the benefits, they'd make a killing.

You've all heard them, save money on your utility bills with new windows, let us add insulation to your attic to save you money, let us spray foam or blow in insulation to your exterior walls and my favorite money grab, lets us lease you a solar panel system for your roof.

If they want to sell you blow in insulation for your attic, make sure they are AIR SEALING it before they add the insulation, otherwise you're wasting your money. You can spend $5K to $10K or more on windows to save maybe 6%-8% on your utility bills. Is that a good return compared to that small savings on your utility bills each year?

Spend maybe $200-$300 dollars, and a few weekends of your time, you can cut your utility bills in the summer and winter by hundreds each year.

It all started for me when I was looking for something on YouTube and Air Sealing popped up as a suggestion. Well I'll warn you, this is one of those Going Down The Rabbit Hole kinda subjects.

Does it work, yes and very well thank you? Most home owners can save between a low of 20% to as high as 40%, on their utility bills each year.

The older the home the higher the return because energy efficiency in the building standards before 2000-2010, was atrocious. No matter how tight and insulated you think your home is, it isn't.

BTW I'm not done with my house, I still have to finish air sealing and increasing the insulation in my attics next spring. The rest of the house including the garage is done.

OK here are some numbers with my electricity use over the summer. At first I wasn't happy because I only saved about $17 a month over the summer before. Then I looked at the graph that comes in my electric bill. It shows the average energy use of all similar sized homes in the area, the top 20% most efficient homes and my house. Then I got real happy. My energy usually runs right in the middle of the top 20% either above or below by 3% to 5%. Now during the June-July, July-August, August-September billing cycles this summer, those three bills averaged 24.5% below the top 20% most efficient homes. My electric bills averaged between mid June and mid September, $98 a month. That was still a 15% drop in my power bills over last summer, on top of what the bills could have been, if I hadn't air sealed the house. Remember I used 24.5% less power over that same period than the average of the top 20% of the most efficient home owners.

What was even better, the power company is comparing my electric use against homes that are 500 square feet smaller.

I'll send you over to YouTube and down the Rabbit Hole. Here's what to search for, "Air Sealing Your Home", "Blower Door Test","Energy Audit","Rim Joist Sealing" and "Attic Sealing". Most of these videos can run between five and maybe thirty minutes at most. These guys get to the point right off the bat as they say, but listen and pay attention to what they are saying and showing you. This is about saving some serious money on your utility bills over the long term. The age of the video is irrelevant. A fourteen year old video is just as informative as a one day old video. Not much has changed when it comes to air sealing other than some of the products used, the process is all the same.

Lastly watch a number of these videos to get comfortable on what you're going to be looking at, in time, money and sweat equity. No one covers everything in their video so it's prudent to listen to a number of these professionals. BTW you can pay someone to do it for you, it will cost you a few thousand and up and over $10K if you have a large house. The upside is many counties and states have generous rebate programs to cut those costs for making your home more energy efficient.

Lastly this is a cumulative process, every thing you do, no matter how small or insignificant you think it is, will save you money. Slow and steady wins the race on this project. If you air seal your home over a month, six months or a year you're still going to cut your utility bills, as you go through the process.

I'll give you one small example. You see that light switch, power outlet, cable/Internet connections on your wall? Unsealed they can cost you between 3% to 4% on your utility bills. Lets say you spend $1000 on heat this winter those switches and power outlets through out your home are costing you $30-$40 over that same period of time. They are pulling warm air out of the house and up into the attic, through the walls. It's called the Stack Effect. A tube of caulking and foam inserts will cost you around $20, to air seal all of them. Do you have ceiling lights, ceiling fans, how about can lights, they're even worse on your utility bills?

Good Hunting!!!

[Goldenstate]

I too did some research on air sealing a home after I noted my home was very hard to keep warm when the wind was blowing outside. I noted that one wall was always more colder than the others in the area. Decided that the only way to find out what was going on was to cut a hole in the sheet rock near the top plate between studs and peek inside.

What I found was stunning. The interior of the wall had holes drilled in the top plate with no pipes or wires, just an open hole where one could feel the puff of air as the gusts of wind blew outside. Another reason for the spider webs and cobwebs in the wall. Also, found drain pipes from the bathroom downstairs headed into the attic. No foam insulation around the drain pipe. Plenty of gaps between the shrunken sheet rock and the top plate as the wood had shrunk as it dried out and the sheet rock did not expand to fill the gap.

Enlarged the hole in the sheet rock so I could use expanding foam to seal the empty hole and around the drain pipe. Used caulking to air seal the gaps between the sheet rock and the top plate. Bought a 27 pound package of loose fill fib er glass insulation and slowly filled the wall up to the hole next to the top plate. Replaced the cut out piece of sheet rock and Spackled up the patch before painting to match the wall. Was now the warmest piece of wall in the house.

I then added up all of the gas bills from the previous heating season and found it cost me $1,040.00 to heat the house from December to April. I was not impressed and decided that more holes were going to be cut into the walls. Before I was done, I found 11 more empty drilled holes in the top plate, plenty of holes with Romex wire not foam insulated as per building code. Also some knot holes letting cold air in as well. One place there was a 2 inch hole in the top plate where a drain pipe was not placed and left open for cold air to enter since the home was constructed 24 years earlier.

Before I was completed, I had cut in excess of 75 holes in the sheet rock and used numerous tubes of caulking and foam to seal the top plate. Added 17 bags of loose fill insulation to the walls and cut my heating gas bill for the year to slightly under $400.00. The bonus was a much more quiet home, far more even temperatures and less wear and tear on the heating cooling systems. I also noted that with some aggressive weatherstripping of the windows and doors, the house was now more free of crawling critters than ever before.

I then attacked the ceiling electrical boxes with caulking and foam as part of the air sealing task. Amazing how many gaps they leave around the boxes in the ceiling. I did more sealing over the past summer and look forward to much lower gas bills this heating season even if the local gas company raises rates once more.

My only regret is not getting mad and electing to cut the first hole in the wall much sooner. This is not a job for the weak, but the pay off is far more than I expected when I started. When the wind picks up speed this year, the temperature of the house does not vary at all and the heater might come on once an hour instead of once each 10-15 minutes.

It was a slow and steady event, but something that had to be done. I moved much furniture away from the walls in the process and managed to throw a few things away in the end game. Looking forward to an even lower gas bill total for the upcoming heating season.

Goldenstate

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

I'm not really willing to do much work in my apartment at the moment, yet whenever I move to a house I may put air sealing as a top-tier priority just like having all the wiring at a more convenient placement.

[ALS]

Last winter I had a heating bill of $605 for the whole winter. That was all the bills added up minus my base charge, hot water tank and gas stove which was $23.75 per month. I'm hoping to drop the bill to maybe what you have around $400-$450 this winter and after finishing up the attic next spring get it down to around $350 or less.There's R-19 insulation in the attic and it will be increased to R-60 and air sealed completely. I already did about 30% of the wire holes and ceiling light boxes and fans. plus all the pipes. Still have the top plates and the chase where the furnace exhaust pipe comes through the attic floor. Just with my last gas bill, I'm already ahead by 14 Therms or $25 over last year.

One side note after sealing the rim seal in the garage, rim joists in the lower level, the ceiling drywall in the garage where it meets the foundation, there are no more bugs coming into my home. When I do find a spider or centipede its already dead.

[Goldenstate]

Forgot to mention that for those building new, they now have a more efficient R-15 insulation and a R-21 for walls. If building new, just go with the air sealing and the new thicker insulation in the walls for a super efficient home from the start.

With the low pitch roof on my home, it was impossible to do much air sealing from the attic. I found that making the holes next to the top plate just large enough for my arm and a caulking gun worked well for the sealing of the top plate. Sometimes the gaps at the top plate were so large that I had to wait for the Dynaflex 230 caulk I was using to shrink up and apply a second layer of caulk to insure no cracks in the resulting seal. When one opens up a wall and can feel cold air pouring down from the top plate gaps, it is a strong message to seal the gaps first, fill the wall with the loose fill fiberglass insulation and then check for shrinkage gaps before the final fill of fiberglass all the way to the top.

I pulled the door casing off of the insides of the exterior doors. Found gaps on all doors between the door frame and the house stud framing. Went after the gaps with expanding foam or caulking if the gap was very small. Here was an opportunity to throw the old door casing away and purchase a new wider more elegant door casing for a wonder visual upgrade as a bonus to the sealing of the home.

I have battery powered electric deadbolts with a code instead of a key for entry. The housing on the deadbolt where the battery is fitted, had plenty of room for some thin insulation. Found some 1/8 inch thick Kaowool on Ebay which was cut and fitted to the interior space of the deadbolt housing.

Another area was the smoke fire alarm entry holes in the ceilings. Used caulking and foam to seal those up as well.

End result is that during the spring and fall days, I have seen the interior temperature of the house vary by less than 5 degrees in a 24 hour period. Almost like a thermos bottle on steroids.

Recently a friend in Oregon reported that he had his home custom built with Foam on the exterior walls and floors and ceilings as well. Backed up with some fiberglass insulation under the floors and ceiling, he had achieved something like R-69 or greater in some areas. Claimed it was the best money he ever spent on a home build in his life.

This past summer was the hottest on record here in Central California. Even with the record heat, the new interior insulation work and sealing resulted in a 6% savings of electrical energy compared to the summer of 2023. Compared to bills from 5 years ago before I started to do much at all to the house, the savings comparison was a whopping 29% improvement. For the first time I was able to avoid purchase of additional electrical power except for a small amount in July. Otherwise, my solar system was able to keep up with the demand like never before.

[ALS]

I'm hoping people on here realize after reading our stories that there is lot more money to be saved over the long run, by making their homes more efficient.

[freebeard]

Forgot to mention that for those building new, they now have a more efficient R-15 insulation and a R-21 for walls. If building new, just go with the air sealing and the new thicker insulation in the walls for a super efficient home from the start.

If you're building new, not retrofitting, nothing trumps geometry. a quasi-spherical shape will suck less heat (or coolth) out of the interior. The only house ever built to my design was in 1980.



When the wind was blowing 100MPH at the Oregon coast, inside it was as quiet as a Mercedes at the same speed. All you could hear was raindrops hitting the window panes.

My brother let himself in after it had sat vacant for two weeks and reported it was still at room temperature.

When the wind was out of the NW that upper deck was in a stagnation point. The greenhouse to the east is a boat tail to the prevailing winds..

If it is a retrofit, consider adding a greenhouse on the windward [or leeward] side.


https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3e/6f...72a95156c0.jpg

Octahedral geometry for a quarter-sphere.

[JRMichler]

My house was built in 2011 with R30 walls and R96 insulation in the attic. It was air sealed, then blower door tested at 0.85 ACH50.

Opening a window on the windward side does not let air in until another window is opened on the opposite side of the house. On a cold day, opening an outside door does not cause a draft throughout the house. There are no cold areas or corners.

An outdoor thermometer is a necessity. Without one, outside temperature of +30 deg F feels exactly like -30 deg F from inside the house. That took a little getting used to when we first moved into this energy efficient home.

We had an unusually hot day one summer when the temperature was over 100 deg F. The AC did not even turn on until the following day. We set the heat to 71 deg F and the AC to 78 deg F.

The AC does not run enough to control the humidity during humid weather with temperatures in the 70's and 80's, so we need to run a dehumidifier. We set a dehumidifier in the utility room, leave the door open, and empty the bucket once a day.

[freebeard]

Matt Risinger has some videos on adding eaves to the roof of an airtight box

www.youtube.com/results?search_query=matt+risinger+eave+detail

[Goldenstate]

It was December 26 of 2023 when I was so disappointed in the ability of my home to stay warm in the winds that morning. I got mad and cut into the wall to find a long hidden horror story that I felt needed to be corrected. A trip to the big box home center soon had me with my first bag of loose fill insulation and my home and life have never been quite the same.

Remembering back to one of the very hot afternoons in July of 2024 when we were experiencing several back to back days of 105 or above temperatures. I was out back doing some yard work in the shade of the house and noted all of the AC units around my home were grinding away nonstop. The AC unit in my yard was silent most of the time. Now and then it would cycle on for a 10-15 minute run time and then shut off. I never did hear the neighbors units get a break. Made me feel good about all the work I had done to air seal and insulate the interior walls.

Most home owners buy into the window replacement option as it is so often seen on the evening news and there is a tax write off for such work. If they offered a tax write off for air sealing and interior wall insulation, the energy companies might see such a loss in income that they would have to raise their rates to keep the stock holders happy. At least a few of us have discovered the advantages of air sealing and interior wall insulation and can enjoy the fruits of our investment.

We spend so much time on our automobiles to gain small increases in gas mileage and seem to neglect that our homes also need some extra special care if we are to gain savings and on a much longer term.