I have a 1952 two story house, forced hot air heat with heat from center ducts and returns are on the exterior walls under the windows. Stairs are over each other (basement, 1st, 2nd floors and attic.) Live in cold CT.
In spite of relatively good double hung windows (single pane), storm windows, and then plastic over dbl hung (you know, double faced tape, plastic, hair dryer to tighten up) I am continuing to find that cold air drifts down from the windows, coming out from under the sill length curtains, then comes down the stairs especially from the 2nd floor to the 1st floor. There is a 4-5 degree difference in temperature in addition to the draft down the stairs to the first floor which effects the entry hallway and that end of the living room.
I have insulated around the attic door, taped it shut (it sits inside a closet) and did the same to the closet door, which did cut down on that draft. But now I have determined that the cold air is literally cascading off the windows. The worst are the north facing windows in 2 bedrooms and the east one in the hallway at the top of the stairs.
I have tried adjusting the duct fins in each room to better balance the heat on the 2nd floor. My house is too small for zone heat. I don’t want to leave the windows exposed (the curtains pulled back) to heat the windows as I leave for work at 6 am (still very dark and cold outside!) I keep asking locally, but no one has a solution except to invest in Anderson windows.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Replies
The primary source of drafts is generally warm air escaping out of leaks at the top of the structure (stack effect). This air will be displaced by outside air at the bottom of the structure, creating drafts.
Folks spend a lot of money on replacement windows, but that is often treating the symptom, not the problem. Cold air will not come in if there is no escaping warm air to displace. That is why sealing the attic plane makes for the best return of your weatherization effort.
When there is air heat, the ductwork itself is often a source of leaks. Also consider open chimney flues, chimney chases, open stud bays, holes for electrical and plumbing... Anything that breaches the attic plane.
Pry the inside trim off the windows and stuff the area between window frame and rough opening with fiberglass, or fill it with low-expansion foam (eg, Daptex). Will make a world of difference.
A friend last night mentioned that when she has stripped window molding, she was amazed at how some were packed correctly with insulation and others were not. So I guess I will need a good carpenter to address these windows in the Spring.
I had a totally new roof done last summer, with a ridge vent and holes drilled down near the floor, styrofoam panels installed to direct the air upward. While it made a huge difference in the summer, I was concerned that this may be impacting the coolness of the 2nd floor and the drafts. I have lots of insulation in the attice except for the plywood walkway down the center for storing things. So this spring I will need someone to remove the plywood and add insulation underneath (I'm sure it is the same packed down old wool insulation from '52.) And, additionally I will want an insulated proper door to the attic to replace the interior door. As much as I have tried to weatherstrip it and seal it with tape, as well as the closet door, I'm sure there must be some small amount of leakage.
The other response above talked about opening a variety of items - not sure what this all means. I do have a VT castings fireplace insert down in the living room, and haven't used it in several years (but the flue is inspected annually) and that door seems shut tightly.
Thanks for your responses!
Removing/replacing the window molding is something that a modestly skilled DIYer can do himself. There are a few tricks of the trade, but it's not rocket science.
Are you sure the supply and returns are as you described them? Supply should be on the outside walls, with returns in the center of the structure.
Yes, Waynel5, the heat ducts come up through the core of the house and the cold return ducts are on the exterior walls directly under the windows. From old books and research, this was not totally uncommon in the 40's & early 50's.
As far as I know, everything in the attic that breeches the ceilings of the 2nd floor is covered with insulation. I think the windows and the attic door are the main culprits. It just seems so weird, when the heat is not blowing for a bit, to feel such a downward draft under the curtains. I have one of those rubber door sweeps on the guest room door and I am now keeping that door closed. When I go in the room, it seems comfortably warm but within a few minutes I can feel the cold air moving over my feet. This is the room that has the closet door and the door to the attic within it. What ever is causing this sure makes the air come out of the room and rush down the stairs! Thought I had a ghost!.......
"covered with insulation" will still allow air to move through it if there are any gaps in ceiling plane.If you see any areas that are dirtier than others then that is where air is moving throug it.
What Bill just said.It isn't enough to just keep piling insulation up in the attic. You have to seal the attic floor.This means that wherever a wire comes into the attic, that hole needs to be foamed shut.Wherever a light fixture or ceiling fan exists, that box must be sealed up with foam...some fixtures (can lights) cannot be buried in insulation. If you have can lights let us know for those instuctions.At the top of each wall, there probably is a gap between the edges of the top plate of the wall and whatever board was applied to the wall. This is from the top plate shrinking after the house was built.That gap should be sealed.Chimneys coming into the attic frequently have gaps around them. These gaps should be covered with nonflamable materials (pieces of metal sealed to the chimney with the (my mind has gone blank!) special cauld that will stand up to high temps.Once the attic floor is sealed, the insulation that you have piled up will be able to do its job.Also, what was mentioned above about sealing any holes in the HVAC ductwork is important.Aside from that, it almost sounds like some of the draft is created by the curtains holding air against the windows until it cools and wants to sink. Some sort of covection current going on. If that is the case, I don't know what to do about that...either leave the curtains open or find a way to prevent the air from moving out from the bottom of them.Rich BeckmanAnother day, another tool.
Trust me. My wife complained and complained about drafts off the windows, and it stopped (both complaining and drafts) when I removed the trim and foamed the space between frame and rough opening.
Thanks everyone. If you have any hints on best sequence to remove the window molding (without totally destroying it) I would appreciate it. I have plaster walls and decades of paint on the trim.....I'll try a 'search' later this afternoon. Meanwhile I will keep the room closed up. I'm hoping it is just the 5 windows that need doing.
I'm going to use the long Holiday weekend to finish removing the wallpaper glue in my bedroom and start patching holes prior to skim coating the original plaster. I hate people who paint over wallpaper!!
Thanks again - you all deserve a wonderful, prosperous and healthy New Year!
Removal is going to vary considerably depending on the specifics of the situation, but the basic approach I use is this:1) If there is a paint seal between trim and plaster (or between trim and window frame), score it with a utility knife. You don't need to cut all the way through, just score it deep enough to assure that the paint will split there rather than peeling/tearing away.2) Get a 3-4" stiff putty knife. It should be ground to a relatively sharp knife edge. Work the putty knife behind the trim. If necessary, use a few taps of the hammer. Do this along the entire length of the trim.3) Pry up slightly with the putty knife, to work the trim slightly loose, then slip the hooked end of a minature "Wonder Bar" behind the trim, with the "heel" of the bar on the putty knife. Pry with the bar, pushing it away from the trim, so the force on the trim isn't right at the edge but an inch or so in from the edge.4) Continue working slowly around, making 2-3 passes, until the trim is loose.Reinstalling is another lesson.
Yes, please give me the next lesson ASAP! Sounds like I can handle this! At least I'm willing to give it a try this weekend - my bedroom glue can wait.......
I have left over corning fiberglass insulation - so I should just stuff it all around (not compress it, that I do know.) What about the sill? Does that have to come off too?
Well, a couple of other things about removal first:If the trim is wide (more than 3 inches or so) then, after you have it slightly loose you may want to work from the frame side rather than (or in addition to) the wall side. Usually the nails into the frame are harder to work loose than the nails into the plaster, and you don't want to stress the trim too much prying from one side such that you split it. (With narrow trim you can generally work from either side, and it's easier to pry against the putty knife placed against the plaster.)Once you have the trim beginning to come loose note where the nails are and concentrate your prying near the nails. This puts less stress on the wood.Once the trim is off, you may find you need to cut the plaster back a bit to gain access to the rough opening. You don't have to cut it back all the way flush with the studs, but you need enough clearance to be able to stuff/foam the space. For drywall a utility knife works fine, but for plaster you may need a small plaster saw.Re stuffing, you **DO** want to really stuff the fiberglass in there tight. The idea is not to simply insulate the areas, but to block airflow. Be sure to stuff the corners FIRST. Low expansion latex foam (Daptex) works better, but can get pricy for wide spaces (since a can doesn't go very far). High expansion foam (regular "Great Stuff") isn't recommended both because it can distort the window frame as it expands and because it's h*** on finishes (and it's just about impossible to avoid getting some on the trim somewhere).
Treatment of the sill area will vary. Usually the window sits pretty much flush against the bottom framing of the rough opening, and there's not much to do. Occasionally there may be shims or spacers there, creating a gap. If you strongly suspect such a gap, it can probably be accessed by removing the trim piece under the bottom of the window, but likely there's no need for this.
Any time you remove trim, there's an issue of how to deal with the nails. Occasionally you can successfully remove the trim with the nails intact and unbent, such that you can just reinstall with the same nails. Though this doesn't produce as strong an attachment as the original nailing job (and some of the pros here are likely to scream and holler), more than occasionally it's quite sufficient.But normally you need to remove the existing nails.The novice's first inclination is to simply tap the points of the nails, pushing the heads back out the front surface of the wood. The problem with this is that often the nail head will take with it several wood chips from the face of the wood, creating an ugly looking divot in the trim.The "textbook" way to prevent this is to lay the piece of trim upside down on a steady surface and pry the trim nails all the way through the back side of the wood, using a pair of pliers, a nipper-style nail puller, or whatever works.A problem with this "textbook" approach is that it greatly enlarges the hole in the trim, meaning that you'll either have to renail with much larger nails, or you'll have to create new nail holes and fill the old ones.A technique I've found to work well in many cases is to use the novice's approach, but to first carefully place the trim piece on something like a scrap 2x4, being sure that the surface where the nail is is in tight contact with the scrap. Then when you tap the nail point to push the nail out, the scrap will help prevent any "tear-out" around the nail hole. This allows you to subsequently reuse the nail hole with the same size or only one size larger nail.If you do decide to create new nail holes in old trim, it's often a good idea to pre-drill the holes with a drill bit only slightly smaller than the nail shank. This helps avoid splitting the old, dry wood. (But beware: If you drill too small of a hole it will actually encourage splitting vs just driving the nail with no pre-drilled hole.)
Thanks for all the great advice! I really do appreciate it.
As a sidenote, I just read last night the article "Fixing a Cold, Drafty House" online here, by Fred Lugano. Lots to consider.....as to sources of cold air besides the framing around the windows. I did note when I installed the styrofoam channels in the attic and pulled back the old insulation, that much of it was 'dirty.' I wondered then if the new holes drilled all along the edge of the house would make matters worse. Now I think they definitely have as this cold air is now coming it at the attic floor level and some must be moving underneath the insulation, moving down the minute holes in the floor (electrical wiring holes, etc.) It is frustrating to now realize that although I now have a properly vented roof, I have only made worse the cascading of cold air down into the living spaces. Nor do I want to go up into the 20 degree attic to start finding and fixing all the little leaking areas. Oh, gosh, my heating bill is going to be astronomical this winter, made worse by increase gas fuel costs.