January, 2014

Cold home? Could be leaky windows

Posted on: January 14th, 2014 by townAdmin

 

You pay enough for gas bills to deal with a cold house.

But alas, many of us will face just this scenario during the upcoming brisk Chicagoland winter.

You may be having a more house-wide problem such as a faulty thermostat, insufficient insulation or a broken furnace. But most likely, it’s something much smaller than is causing your house to feel like a refrigerator: A leaky window.

How to find a leaky window

Even if you don’t have many windows in the house, it can be tricky to find the culprit to a frigid house. It also may be more than one window; but if this isn’t a common occurrence in your home, this is most likely a one-window affair. This also shouldn’t be an overly complicated or pricey process, so we’ll walk you through the commonsense approach to finding that leaky culprit.

To find the guilty party, you should start by closing the doors to all rooms in the house. Then, make a sandwich and wait 10 minutes. Now, carefully enter each room and notice what you feel. Do you feel that the room is colder than the rest of the house? Are you feeling dryer? Do you feel a light breeze? Do this for each room.

At this point, it should be clearly obvious which room has the leaky window. Now, to find the window in question, use another commonsense method: The touch-test. Go to each window and slide your hand on the inside windowsill. Repeat for each window.

Do you feel any moisture on any of the windowsills? Do any of them seem colder than the others? If there’s only one leaky window – which is most likely the case – you’ll be able to figure this out pretty easily. If you don’t notice that one window feels noticeable different than the others, compare how the windows feel in this room to the windows in another room in the house that isn’t noticeably colder. It may be the case that all the window in that particular room are leaky!

What next?

You can purchase plastic coverings for you windows to block out the leaks, but this is a temporary fix – and may not capture all the heat-spilling that occurs at this window. That’s why you should consider having a professional come it to help and get this fixed the right way.

Visit TownandCountryWindowCleaning.com today to schedule an appointment. Window leaks make the heating bill go up, so make sure you get the best help you can!