Beating back the cold

I am curious to what efforts everyone does to help retain heat in their home for the winter. Now, I am not talking about the obvious wood stove, fire place or pellet stove. Rather I am talking about the intangibles like R value in your walls/roof, curtains, cell blinds, and anything else you might do.


To give you an example, we use double cell shades in the windows for our bedroom. Our plan is to put them around the rest of the house. As these are not light blocking, we are going to put up light blocking curtains. Between the two, they should fight the vast majority of heat transfer with the windows in our bedroom. In our master bedroom is a door out to the backyard. We put down two blankets at the backdoor to help prevent drafts. In place of that, we plan to put something like this, Amazon.com: Draft Stopper 3" X 38" Natural Buckwheat Hull Filled - Chickadees: Home & Kitchen

Future plans:

• Insulate the ceiling as this room currently has 1-1/2" tongue and grove pine below the standard roofing. There are open beams in the room, and I'll preserve 2" of the exposed beams. That insulation alone whether it's an open/closed cell foam or standard insulation, we should see a major benefit in the heat loss calculation for this room.
• Under this room is a garage. The plan here is to remove the existing sheet rock, and re-insulate the cavities with a closed cell phone to give us the best R-value possible.

Looking forward to non-heating options everyone uses.

 

When we redid our house it was gutted and spray foamed. Low e glass with whatever solar block was available at the time.
Batting can't compete with spray foam. The quiet and insulation quality is outstanding.

I used r12 for sound deadening and insulation between 1st and second story floor/ceiling
Muffles sound and its very easy to temp control different rooms.

 

I've had my mind set on doing more attic insulating.
I was thinking about pulling all the old vermiculite out, but I went up there a couple days ago to discover there's more of that than I thought. Plan B.....use Comfort Batts over the top of that stuff. There's only 3.5" up there, except for the 2 rooms I've already done.
At this point, I'd be real happy to increase to maybe an R30 or so. Big job that's gonna' take a while, as there's a bunch of stuff up there from PO to remove.
We bought and installed all new windows in the stove room last year, along with a new fiberglass front door and a nice storm as well. What a difference. I also redid that whole room with new wall insulation and did R49 in the attic.
There's also a new FG rear door and storm as well yet to be installed.
Wife made some thick curtains for the back bedroom that seem to help some. Every window in this house (other than the new ones) leaks cold air to a small extent. When we have the cash, those are on the chopping block.

 

When increasing the R value in the roof and exterior walls, have any of you considered the introduction of fresh air as you tighten up your homes?

 

Brother should be coming over tomorrow to help install the new rear door. I'll do the storm myself, unless he wants to help with that too.
Man, I can't wait.......maybe that room will be at least a little warmer, and some of the cold air from that room running through the house should be less.

 

I don't think it's an issue in older homes.
Even new homes are mostly poorly built and not "air tight".
Off the top of my head there are bathroom fans venting, range stove vent. Attic vent.
With normal insulation air leaks through outlets and switches Etc.

 

We had an energy audit a few years ago and benefitted from air sealing and more attic insulation. I replaced the back door to a steel skin, insulated door with double pane glass. I also put in an insulated storm door. The mudroom is now the same temp as the rest of the house.

I put in new basement windows and trim and insulated around them. The air sealing revealed a lot of gaps, including a fist sized one that went from the basement up into the first floor wall.