Hi fellow Hiveians,
Today I wanted to talk about figuring out where the damn cold air is coming from in our house!
A Little Draft
Have you ever been in a room, in the wintertime where it gets really cold, and you can feel the bite of the bitter cold outside?
We've been feeling that bitter cold where we live for a few weeks now. I don't mind it that's for sure, but one of the things that has been a little tricky is that the house has been getting very cold. I knew that I needed to figure out where the hell that was coming from, because it was annoying as well as costing us a fair bit of money in heating bills!
In the wintertime where we live, it can vary. For the most part, many of the days are hovering around freezing temperature, sometimes a little bit higher but for the past month or so, it's been consistently below freezing, sometimes well below. This means that naturally we have to heat the house more. Add in the fact that our downstairs neighbor moved out and had their place for sale, that also meant that the temperature was likely kept at 62 or something really cold so that it wouldn't cost extra money. This meant that both our walls and our floors were cooooooold.
One of the days a few weeks ago, I was closing up things for the night trying to get figured out where the draft was coming from and I unplugged a cord from an electrical outlet on the outside wall. When I reached down I felt the cold fucking air assault my hand! I was like whoa, what the hell? So I put the back of my hand against it since it tends to be more sensitive than the palm, and sure enough there was a draft! Now in many homes, this would not be the case because they are properly insulated.. but with the poor construction of the condo we live in, that doesn't surprise me in the least. These fuckers cut corners out of cut corners it's that bad. Thankfully not as bad as construction in China with crumbling concrete.. but still, pretty bad!
So I went around to the outside walls and felt the outlets and sure enough, every one of the fuckers had air flowing right on in! It wasn't a LOT of air but it was definitely air, and it was definitely cold as fuck. I immediately knew that I needed to get outlet covers because that's why the damn house is extra cold! What the hell bro?
When I was done with the outlets, I then went over to the windows and checked the corners of the windows where you can open them. Sure enough there was a little draft there. That doesn't surprise me as much because the windows shrink with the extreme cold since they are plastic, so that's not too bad. It's not elegant but I stuffed a little bit of toilet paper in the corners and it closed the draft right up.
It's been about 3 weeks since I closed the holes in the windows and plugged the outlets and let me tell you, the temperature has been a lot more pleasant in the house! Especially in the room where my work computer is, that room doesn't have newer windows, we just covered the old pieces of shit with plastic and it really brought the temperature up closing it off. Adding the outlet covers brought the average temperature in the room up a few degrees which is fantastic!
I'm glad that I randomly found the cold air, and realized that it was the culprit for the colder temperatures in the house. Plus it was a really cheap fix compared to the higher energy bills! The box of outlet covers, 12 of them, cost me 2.50$!! Not freaking bad, eh?!
What about you, have you figured out a way that the place you live in has a little bit of an energy leak? Let me know in the comments!
-CmplXty. Real human written content, never AI. All pictures are mine unless otherwise stated
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In my area, it is still very nice for us to look for cool air because there are still many sheltered areas here so the air is quite fresh and free from the police because it is far from the city.
I hope you can figure it out. We have two things working against us in our house. First our windows are very old. You can actually see the blinds moving when the wind kicks up out of the East over 20 MPH. Then we have a cathedral ceiling and that doesn't allow for a lot of insulation since there is no attic. My wife is always freezing in our current house. :P