In my winter quest to make my house energy efficient, I bought a new programmable thermostat for a little under $60. I also bought a $12 kit to weather proof my windows and doors. It comes with the plastic shrinking covers and foam to seal the doorway edges. Has anyone ever done this? Does it work? Will I get my money back?
I shrink-wrapped my windows at one apartment I lived in. It certainly stopped all the drafts. I didn’t try to determine by comparisons if it was actually saving money. But it did what it was supposed to do.
“Saran”, BTW, not “seran”.
I’ve done it. It’s great against drafts, and easy to get off.
Just be careful not to hold the hair dryer in one spot for too long…a brief sweep tightens it up just fine.
Definitely cuts down on the drafts. Never checked the heating bills to see if it paid for itself or not.
Also: I stopped the hair-dryer thing. Too much tightening makes the plastic pull from the tape and/or melts a hole in the plastic. OTOH, the wind makes the plastic move, and that causes crinkling noises.
It’s hard to say if you’ll get your money back, but you’ll be more comfortable. Even tiny drafts make a room feel much colder.
At $6-7.00/box, you don’t have to save too many gallons of heating oil (or comparable gas/electrical units) to make your money back. So you almost certainly will make your money back over the course of a winter unless your windows are already very tight.
If your windows are at all leaky, you’ll recover the cost of the material many times over. Plus, you’ll be more comfortable without the cold drafts blowing in.
Yeah, it definitely helps, just like heavy drapes help - you want still air there. I have the original windows in my 1928 house and I shrink wrapped them the first winter and just kind of left it up - yeah, it looks kind of like sloughing skin, but I’ve been lazy and every little bit helps. And it does absolutely help.
I’ve used the outside version (no hair dryer) for years. You can immediately tell the difference – it stops the drafts and adds a little to the R value of the window (I think the indoor version would do a better job, since the outdoor type tends to stick to the upper window pane, allowing cold to get through even if drafts don’t). You do save more than what you pay for them, though.
We have a room in our apartment that we choose not to heat, since we don’t use it often. When we do need it, we go in early, turn up the heat, and use it later. Last winter, it got every, very cold in there.
This year, we saran wrapped the window for the first time (though evidence shows that several previous tenants have done it in the past). We have been able to walk in there and use the room without having to turn up the heat at all.
I haven’t compared our heating bills, but I’m sure that translates to the 12-15$ (?) we spent on the box in the first place. If it doesn’t yet, I have a feeling it will by the time winter is over!
I just wish we could do every window; the living room ones are newer, but still drafty in one corner, but they aren’t really set up in a way that we can put the plastic on easily. We also lose a lot of heat through the bathroom window and the balcony door in the kitchen. Still, we have 3 of the worst culprits wrapped up for the winter!
My back door was SOO drafty. First off, the outside door has just a screen in the top half and a huge gap at the bottom, so that automatically exposed the inner (thicker) door to the cold. That door had a draft under it and along the open edge. A little foam stripping hopefully fixed that problem. We’ll see, I suppose.