Do-It-Yourself Draft Inspections

Winter vacation. Freezing girl warming her hands.You’re trying to determine where the drafts are coming from in your home. You don’t want to keep throwing away money every winter season to keep your Toronto area home warm. You can certainly hire an energy audit, an experienced professional would come into your home with special equipment to detect where the drafts are.

That would be the best option, but you’re looking to do things yourself. Now that we’ve entered into winter, it’s much easier to get this done. You can consider this a do-it-yourself draft inspection. And here are some steps you might want to take.

Determine when the temperature will be its coldest.

To do a draft inspection by yourself, you want the temperature differential between the inside of your home and the outside to be as significant as possible. Pay attention to the weather forecasts and choose an evening or even a nighttime when the temperature is going to be as low as possible outside.

Turn your thermostat up.

On that evening or night, turn your thermostat up quite a bit higher than you would normally keep it. You don’t want to make it completely uncomfortable, but it should be warm enough for you to walk comfortably in a T-shirt and shorts.

Walk around.

Once your home is warm inside, walk around close to the walls and you will begin to feel where cold air is pressing in. The most common places are the windows and doors.

If you notice the cold air is pushing right through the glass, the seal between the double glazing may have failed or you have a single plant pain window. This is a good indication that it’s time to replace the windows throughout your home.

You may also feel drafts along the exterior portion of the windows. Whether you have wood or vinyl windows, it’s usually an indicator that these are old and the insulation has broken down.

Windows have a life expectancy of about 15 years, so if your windows are older than that, it’s time they were replaced.