I think we're trying to save on heating bills backwards

I've been thinking about this lately:

When the heating bill gets too high, most people immediately think about the heating system.

Turn the thermostat down.

Buy a more efficient heater.

Upgrade the furnace.

Replace the windows.

Add more insulation.

And some of those things absolutely make sense.

But I'm starting to wonder if we're looking at the problem from the wrong end.

**Before trying to produce more heat, shouldn't we first figure out why we're losing the heat we already paid for?**

An old house can have a surprising number of little leaks.

Around doors.

Around windows.

Around pipes.

Around attic hatches.

Through poorly sealed penetrations.

Places you don't really notice until you start thinking about the house as a system.

And individually, none of them seem important.

But put enough of them together and you're basically paying to heat the outdoors.

What interests me is that some of the fixes don't have to be expensive or permanent.

Weatherstripping.

Caulk.

Simple draft blocking.

Insulating an attic hatch.

Even temporary window insulation during the coldest part of the year.

That last one especially caught my attention.

Instead of replacing an old window, you can make a removable insulated covering and put it up when you actually need it.

It's not pretty.

It's not high-tech.

But I'm much more interested in something that costs $20–$50 and can actually improve comfort than something that costs thousands and takes years to pay for itself.

So I'm curious what people here have actually experienced.

**If you had $100 and one weekend to make an older house hold heat better, what would you tackle first?**

Not looking for generic "turn the thermostat down" advice.

I'm interested in the weird little things that actually made a difference.

Did sealing one particular area make a noticeable difference?

Did attic insulation help?

Did window coverings help?

Did you discover a draft you didn't even realize was there?

And if you've done several projects, which one gave you the biggest improvement for the least money?

I'd especially like to hear from people living in older houses or cabins.

Hey Lana, welcome to Permies!

Curtains and drapes can make a tremendous difference, especially in a poorly insulated house. My parents' house is old, and although they've done a lot to improve the insulation, there's still more to be done. The door between the entrance and the kitchen is quite drafty, which leads to the kitchen sometimes getting quite cold in the winter. A cotton bedcover hung as a drape in front of the door really helps surprisingly much. I imagine the difference would be even bigger if it was a heavy wool cloth. Likewise, heavy curtains in front of the windows can help keep the heat in during the night, or in winter cold snaps, and a drafty floor can be instantly improved by means of rugs.

I think one could do a lot in the curtains and drapes department without spending any money at all, by repurposing any unused cloth one has already. Plus, with some imagination it could make the house cosier than it was.

Lana Reyes wrote:**If you had $100 and one weekend to make an older house hold heat better, what would you tackle first?**

Ooooh, this sounds fun!

First I'm going to assume that if you only have one weekend, then you aren't there already. Which means it's likely that there's some time to think and prepare before you get there. Also, that you've seen the place and have some ideas where the worst problems are going to be.

If I went back in time and did the same for the house I'm in now, this is what I'd do...

Make a couple of draught-excluder sausages to go along the bottom of the doors - there's a half inch gap under each of them. The work gets done in advance and just a couple of seconds to install. Possibly the best and fastest fix in my opinion.

Try to source a load of the blue-foam insulation sheets that people are pulling out of their roofs to replace with thicker, better ones. Our attic is gradually filling up with other people's discarded insulation. I've also very recently converted some of a new batch that arrived a few days ago into window-screens for the west window to block out the evening sun, but it would work just as well to keep heat in too. They are very quick to make - basically all that's needed are offcuts of insulation sheet, a tape measure and a knife.

Stock up on tools and supplies for filling in anywhere that air can get in or out. Our roof was a joke - all the woodwork was bent and you could see daylight between the tiles, but filling up the biggest ones and laying as much insulation as we could until we could change the roof helped tremendously.

The main door here is made of a sheet of metal and seemed designed to act as a giant heat exchanger. Blue insulation was a quick fix for that too. But you need some way to stick it in place so stock up on something suitable.

That stick-on mirrored window film helps keep heat in (or out) pretty well, and means that light still gets in. It's just a few minutes per window to install, assuming the window is vaguely clean so the film will stick.

That lot might keep us busy for a whole weekend. In this place we worked (are still working...) gradually. Changing the roof for a new insulated one with no leaks helped amazingly. Double glazing helped. The one huge thing that revolutionised our winters here though was the rocket mass heater. So much more heat for the same amount of wood, plus the mass holds the heat that would normally escape up the chimney and holds it in the mass instead, where it gradually escapes into the house to keep the temperature nice and steady all night and all the next day until we light it again. That's not a project for a weekend though!

I just remembered - if you live anywhere that sheep are kept, you might be able to get free sheep wool, which makes excellent insulation that you can push into gaps or wrap around pipes. The value of raw fleece has dropped so much that farmers will often give you a load of it free if you offer to just take it all so they can be rid of it. Or they might have it lurking in the back of a barn somewhere. It's always worth an ask!

Rented several old places in a cold climate while I was in college.

Caulk for little cracks
Spray foam for bigger ones
Shrink wrapping old windows can really help out a lot in a hurry as well.
Windows in unused rooms can be blocked off with insulative material.
Windows just needed for light can get bubble wrap on the glass.

Cook at home vs eating out.  The kitchen really dumps a lot of heat into the home.  2 for 1 benefit in the winter.  Not so good in the summer.  We adapt our cooking methods in the summer to reduce cooking times. For example, fajitas instead of pot roast.

Be careful with vapor barriers/improvised insulation, though.  A vapor barrier should be on the warm side in the winter.  Get it wrong and condensation starts forming immediately and mold shortly thereafter.

Welcome to the forum!

Instead of going backwards, move forward by getting a rocket mass heater aka RMH.

An infographic for the best heat:

https://permies.com/w/heat

O you could heat the people not the space:

https://permies.com/wiki/236202/Heating-People-Spaces-Kris-De

Absolutely insulting first.

Here we have "energy audits" the government pays for. The assessment includs all the things mentioned above and more.  The report lists, in orderthe things that will cause the most energy savings.

Note, this is the same for both winter and sumer, so it's less about heat and more about energy iused to make the home comfortable.

The audit covers a lot, but always when we did it, weather stripping, window maintain, drapery, and small changes were listed as making the most impact.

Only once dryer upgrades came above door snakes.

We can also borrow an energy audit kit from the local library.   It doesn't have the massive blower machine, but it has things like a thermometer for the walls and meters we can test appliances with.


Once we get an audit, we can apply for a free kit from the power company with things like weather stripping, window films, door snakes... ad if we buy stuff, we can keep the receipts, get a second audit a year later, and get a refund for the upgrades based on our score difference.



"And if you've done several projects, which one gave you the biggest improvement for the least money"

Right now, our walls have our lowest r value and cannot be improved.   This spring me put curtains on the wall (not just the window) of one room and it dramatically improved the insulation and stopped the room from getting hot in the summer.

We are thinking of expanding this idea for a few more rooms.  

Door snakes for some of the interior rooms might also happen as each bedroom has a thermostat and some like it hot, others like it cold.  

For $100 I'd get some nice wool socks, a wool hat, and a sweater. Boom, nothing bothers me until close to freezing.

My experience with old houses/cabins is that they are rarely "really well insulated/efficient except for this 1 small part." E.g. they'll have drafty walls, no insulation, bad window seals, and single pane glass. Just fixing 1 thing won't move the needle very much. If you put new efficient, well-sealed windows in, you'll still lose all your heat through the walls. So I am not aware of any broadly applicable "quick fixes" although they can of course exist in a specific house, but it's case by case.

Heat one spot instead of the whole house.

I spend most of my time in one room, reading or at the computer. A single electric seat warmer goes a long way. Plus good socks, cap, sweater etc.

This entire thread reminds me of my college experience in the snow belt of upstate New York, living in rented rooms in decrepit wooden buildings that had more drafts than a screen door.
Like M Pearson says above, the whole thing was a hot mess!! (and today most have been demolished, for good reason)
$100 was big money back then (cue that old timey music), and for two years I saved even more money by living in attic rooms that weren't connected to the heating system.

The first thing I did was always seal the windows with that plastic film business. Then put up something to cover them- curtains, blankets. Next, cover the walls- hippie tapestries were the in thing back then, but literally anything would work.
Next, appropriate clothing- a pair of long johns or even stockings, double socks, gloves, hat, scarf. Use all the time. Sleep in a hooded sweatshirt.
Last, pile on those blankets and/or whatever else you have. I had friends who lived in the [also unheated] basement of one of the rooming houses I was in, and during a blizzard one year I went to visit and they had all their coats and sweaters on their beds because it was that bad.

All of these things were great prep for living in other places with serious cold and big snow-- I remembered my friends in the basement one year as I was laying under about 25kg of heavy weighted blankets in an unheated, drafty straw-roof house in Northern Japan during an early blizzard!!

If you can, isolate a smaller space that you can heat up more easily. In my current house, that means closing all the doors and focusing on just one room, whether that is the living room, my office, the bedroom, etc.

Among all the other good ideas here the only one I would add right off is discovering cardboard as insulation.  Maybe not the best, but it's free, easily replaced, and easy to cut and work with.  In particular, cutting pieces to fit over unnecessary, west and north facing windows in the winter.  I made panels of 3-5 thicknesses, duct taped together on the edges, just the right size to press into the window wells from the outside, with a couple of pieces of wood jammed into place to help hold them.  The windows are enough under the overhang to keep the cardboard from getting wet except in the worst storms, and wow the difference it made in those rooms.  I wish they were easier to place and remove and I'd be tempted to see if they help in summer heatwaves as well. In comparison this seems to help even more than taping plastic up on the inside, although this does continue to let light in.

I agree with all the concepts discussed, however I will stress that in humid climates (think Newfoundland), the houses built 100 years ago were intended to be leaky because it was the only way to stop them from going moldy.

At one point in Ottawa, which isn't that humid in the winter, Hubby put 2" insulation against a window in a 1950's house only to discover that since air could get in, as the sun hit and warmed it up, then the evening cooled it, ice built up only to thaw and dribble down inside the wall.

Yea, great point! There's a whole thing with modern houses and condensation forming on the back of the drywall.. total nightmare. They try to solve it with more vapor barriers & moisture barriers & engineering this or that.. but I like a house that breathes. (Yes I know houses don't literally breathe.)

Welcome to Permies!

As other people mentioned, draft blockers for the doors, and window coverings. Caulk is good.

My house is well insulated, but if you don't have good insulation, you should consider it. Using something to increase the R value of the windows is very important. Adding extra insulation in the attic. That sort of thing. Hot air rises, which is why having good insulation in one's attic can improve the warmth tremendously.