Saturday night it was 34 degrees and windy out of the northwest, which is exactly the weather you want for finding drafts and exactly the weather you don't want to be out in. So we stayed in, closed every window, turned on the bath fan and ran the dryer on air only, no heat. The energy assessor had suggested it back in September: with two fans pulling air out, the house runs slightly negative, and every leak pulls air in where you can see it.
Then I lit an incense stick from a pack Tessa has had since college and started walking slowly around the Cape. "The house smells like a dorm room," she said from the couch, which was fair.
A confession first. In October I bought a $229 thermal camera that clips onto my phone. It makes very nice purple and yellow pictures. The incense stick, which cost maybe thirty cents, told me more in one evening than the camera did in two weeks, because it showed me which way the air was actually moving. The camera is going back this week.
Where the smoke went sideways
I went door to door, outlet to outlet, holding the stick a couple of inches from every edge and watching the smoke. When it rose straight up, fine. When it bent sideways or got sucked flat, I put a piece of blue tape on the spot.
The front door was leaking at the latch side and the top corner, where the old foam weatherstrip had flattened into something like a strip of felt. The side door had no sweep at all, and the smoke lay down flat and slid under it toward the landing. The back door had a sweep, but it was worn to nothing, and the oak threshold underneath has a dip worn into it from seventy years of feet. That one pulled the smoke under the door fast enough to make the stick flicker.
Then the outlets. I tested every one on an exterior wall, upstairs and down, and fourteen of them moved the smoke. The attic hatch in the bonus room ceiling leaked around all four edges. The two little original wood windows in the upstairs gable ends were the worst spots in the house; the smoke went in about four directions at once. The good news was everywhere else. The knee-wall doors barely moved the smoke since the insulation crew sealed them ten days earlier, the 1998 vinyl windows were mostly calm, and the basement rim joists I foamed in October were quiet everywhere I checked.
What we bought and fixed on Sunday
One morning trip to Menards and a lot of blue tape removal later:
- Front door weatherstrip kit for the jamb and head: $28
- Side door sweep: $17
- Back door sweep: $17
- Foam gaskets for 14 outlets and switches, two packs: $9
- Foam weatherstrip tape for the attic hatch: $15
That's $86. We also spent $42 on plastic window film kits for the two gable windows, the kind you tape around the trim and shrink tight with a hair dryer. It's not pretty, but those two windows are original and replacing them isn't on this year's list.
The outlet gaskets were the easiest part, but they're still a breaker-off job. I flipped the breakers, checked each outlet with the Klein tester, took off the cover plate, set the gasket and put the plate back. Fourteen of those took about an hour, mostly walking back and forth to the basement panel.
My mistake was the side door sweep. I set it about an eighth of an inch too low, and the door dragged on the threshold hard enough that Tessa had to lean on it to latch it. I took it off, moved it up and reset the screws in new holes. It's right now, and the old holes are hidden behind the sweep, which is the only reason I'm telling you about them.
The one I left alone
The new sweep on the back door helps, but the real problem there is the threshold itself. Replacing it means cutting out the old oak, and I didn't want to start a job like that on a cold Sunday with the door open to the backyard. For now, the sweep does most of the work. The threshold is on the list for a warmer day.
When I lit a second stick Sunday evening and walked the same route, the smoke stayed mostly straight at every piece of tape I'd peeled off. The Menards receipt went into the junk drawer with the others, waiting for the 11 percent rebate.
Trip count: 2. One for the parts and one for the window film I forgot. A third is coming when the thermal camera goes back.
