The Importance of Air Sealing.

Homes use over 21% of the energy used in the United States and much of that energy is spent heating and cooling your house. And even worse, a whole lot of that energy is spent heating and cooling your backyard and front porch, through leaks and holes in your building envelope.

Although some of the air leaks in your home are visible to the untrained eye — like perhaps the gap under your front door — much of the average home's air leakage takes place in areas you don't see. A lot of it takes place because of something called the stack effect, or chimney effect, which works like this: warm air rises and works its way up through the floors and/or walls, then up into your attic through structural defects, holes in your ceiling, recessed lighting, leaky duct work, the furnace flue, the plumbing stack, or a poorly sealed attic floor. To keep the house in balance, replacement air enters through the bottom part of your house - perhaps from the crawl space or from near the garbage cans or some other unappetizing place.  This is why, in most cases, air sealing the attic should be one of the first air sealing projects in your home.  (There are a few important exceptions to this rule, which is why we prioritize the list of repairs.)

Perhaps equally important, air sealing is crucial for maximizing the performance of insulation, the other major component of your home's building envelope. The R-Value of insulation is determined under the assumption that there will be no air infiltration throughout the insulation — it assumes that there will be adequate air sealing around the insulation. Once insulation is left exposed to air movement (air moving up through your attic floor, for example), R-Value decreases.

If you do some serious air sealing work, you can expect to lower your energy use and increase the comfort of you home. To boot, because the materials are relatively inexpensive, and because much of the most important work takes place in the attic and basement (where you don't have to worry about fancy trim or replacing drywall), many homeowners are able to do it themselves or, if you have someone do it for you, the upfront cost is usually pretty low.

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