With yesterday’s snowstorm, it finally feels like winter is here to stay! As the temps drop, you may start to notice some cold spots in your old home – or maybe you just want to learn a few ways to help keep your old home more energy efficient in the winter. No fear! Here’s a quick list of winter tips for your old home to slowly start making it a bit less drafty and more energy efficient. Hint: all of these suggestions can be done inside without stepping foot in the blistering cold.
1. Insulate your rim joists. What’s a rim joist you may ask? They are the joists that run perpendicular to the floor joists in your basement. See the nifty diagram to the right!
Overall it’s a tedious but fairly inexpensive project, and can be completed inside in the winter! Check out a really great simple tutorial (with photos!) here. There are a multitude of ways to complete this project using different material types (spray foam insulation vs rigid foam insulation) so choose the type that works best for your home and budget.
2. Install a smart thermostat. This is also a fairly simple task that can be done inside during the winter to help you save on your energy bills!
If you have a furnace: you should definitely be utilizing a smart thermostat! Furnaces heat air not objects, so the temperature in your home can change quickly making smart thermostats ideal for forced heat homes. The thermostats can learn your patterns and keep your home cooler when you’re away, at night and more. Plus, you’ll have the comfort of knowing your furnace is working when you’re out of town on a vacation – all from your phone!
If you have a boiler: I would still utilize a smart thermostat but would recommend using it differently than you would if you had a furnace. Boilers heat objects, not air, so they take longer to get going, and cannot react and adapt to change as quickly. So if you do have a boiler, you’ll want to consider setting only 2 different temperatures for your home, one for the day and one for the night, with the actual temperatures only differing by 2-3 degrees or so. If you were to set up your boiler system with a bunch of fancy smart routines that have the temp moving all around, your system will be working in overdrive to keep up and you’ll waste a lot of energy. Boilers are most efficient when kept around the same temperatures (again, a few-degree shift at night is definitely fine).
And one final note about boilers, they are a heat-only system, so most boiler thermostats do not have a C wire (the wire that powers the thermostat). Because of this, you are limited in which smart thermostat you can buy, as most require a C wire. Luckily, I have done a lot of trial and error myself (and internet research!) and discovered that only the Google Nest Learning thermostat will work without a C wire. It’s the ~$200 Nest, not the cheaper new $99 model. It’s also incredibly easy to install! We have one with our 35 yr old boiler and it works amazing. You will have to turn off all of the “learning” features though, as you will want your house temps to stay pretty consistent as previously mentioned. And you will want to pop your Nest off the wall every few years to give it a charge!
3. Inspect and make a plan for your fireplace. This is a pretty loose concept but I think it’s important to consider how often you use your fireplace, its current state, and your future goals for the fireplace.
If you have a wood-burning fireplace and use it often, you could keep it completely open-faced as long as your damper is still operable and intact. If you don’t prefer that look or your damper is rusted away (like ours!) I would splurge and get a custom air-tight door made for the fireplace. Our go-to chimney inspector, Aaron with Aaron’s Hearth, recommends a local Minnesota company, Wilkening, that makes beautiful gasket-sealed doors. While you should keep the doors open while burning wood, when not in use the air-tight doors help keep cold air from seeping into your living space.
Alternatively, if you have a wood-burning fireplace that is not in great shape, or you aren’t interested in using it, you have a few options to “seal” it for the winter. We put a balloon plug in our fireplace last winter when not in use, and it made a huge difference!
4. Inspect window and door areas for drafts. There are a bunch of simple fixes to help with a drafty door or windows in a pinch! For drafty doors, consider installing updated weatherstripping, a new door sweep, or making a DIY draft blocker. All quick to-dos that are fairly inexpensive and will help keep the cold air out in the long run.
If your windows are original (like ours!) and you have not had them refinished yet, I would consider making sure your window’s sashes are locked. Locking them helps seal the window shut! If they don’t lock anymore because the sash lock is misaligned, check out these plastic shims that were created for this exact problem! We installed them on some of our windows and it’s made a huge difference. You could also consider plastic wrapping windows that are extra drafty, or making sure you close your curtains at night. You’d be surprised at how much window coverings help insulate!
5. Have your boiler or furnace serviced! You’d be surprised how many folks don’t regularly service their HVAC systems, or change their furnace filters. Getting your furnace or boiler a tune-up will help keep it running more efficiently during the colder months and (hopefully) prevent you from having any major issues when it’s -30 degrees outside.
Pro tip: if you have an old boiler, I cannot recommend Boehm Heating and Cooling enough. They are *the* old boiler pros in the Twin Cities and won’t just automatically tell you it needs to be replaced. They service our 35-year-old boiler, as well as many of my clients!
A few bonus tips for next fall when the weather is still warmer: go around the outside of your home (and inside too!) and seal up any gaps you find. Old homes have a tendency to not be very airtight, so you can expect to have cold air seep in through little nooks and crannies throughout your home. Air sealing is probably the most important factor when it comes to creating a more energy-efficient home.
And lastly, I would recommend contacting MNCEE (Minnesota Center for Energy and Environment) to schedule a home energy audit! It’s like a report card for your home’s energy efficiency, and they will give you great tips to help you plan future projects (and where your money will make the greatest impact).