Winter is only a few weeks away. During that period when it would be freezing outside, all you will want to do is lock yourself indoors, where it is warm and comfy, and engage yourself in interesting leisure activities.
However, this can only be possible when you insulate your home. This will prevent air exchange between the indoor environment and the extremely cold outdoor environment.
While replacing your old windows with new high-performance ones might be the most effective approach to insulating your home, the process might be too costly.
Fortunately, other simple and inexpensive solutions are worthy of consideration. The rest of this article covers three of them.
1 Install energy-efficient window treatments
When insulating your home, the best places to work on are areas where the warm air inside can easily escape into the exterior surroundings. The more likely targets are the doors and windows. It is crucial to make certain changes in your home as the weather gradually becomes cold and harsh.
For starters, you might want to replace your curtains. Your best bet is to swap light curtains with the ones made from thick materials such as velvet or heavy linen.
During the day, these curtains can be pulled back to the sides to allow adequate ventilation and improve the ambiance of your home.
And at night, when the weather is extremely cold, they can be closed to provide an extra layer of warmth. Another effective solution is to install motorized window blinds or shades. Most homeowners often wonder, “how are motorized shades powered?” . Most can either be plugged in to a wall outlet or simply use a battery pack.
The truth is that you need to consider several factors when shopping for them. These shades come with many perks. For instance, you can automate when and how much light enters your home.
2 Use draft stoppers
A draft stopper is a small, stuffed piece of fabric that is placed at the base of a door or window to prevent air from getting into your home. Draft stoppers are affordable and available at nearly all home improvement stores.
It’s possible to design one yourself from a long sock or sewn fabric. This can be done by filling the sock or fabric with rice, beans or popcorn for shape and denseness.
Note that even though draft stoppers are effective, they have one major downside. They can only block the base of the window (or door), which is only one of the four potential breaches along the perimeter of the window panels.
3 Weatherstripping
Weatherstripping is an easy and inexpensive process that can be done to the stationary parts of both doors and windows. Weatherstripping makes short work of providing a better seal around the edges of your doors and windows.
Like draft stoppers, foam and felt weatherstrips can be bought at various home improvement stores. The installation process is remarkably easy too.
To install a weatherstrip around your window, you only need to unroll the old weatherstrip from its edges and replace it with the new one.
You can fill the moveable parts of your windows — like the space between the window panels and the window frame with weatherstrip. However, taking this step may present its little problem.
It can be difficult to open the window without removing the weatherstrip and then reapplying it later. Although this is not much of a problem, especially when you consider that people rarely open their windows during winter.
