Your Windows Aren't the Problem — Your House Leaks Heat HERE ($11 Amish Fix)

My name is Isaac Miller. I am Amish, and I've kept a forge in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania for thirty-some years, living in a stone farmhouse that was standing before my grandfather was born. You hold your hand near the window glass, feel the cold, and figure that's your problem. Maybe a man with a laminated binder has already quoted you fourteen thousand six hundred dollars for nine windows. The thermostat says sixty-six and the bedroom never gets there. You did what anyone would do, and the cold keeps coming. Feeling cold and leaking air are two different things. Glass is a poor insulator, but it is sealed, and very little air moves through it. Warm air rises and squeezes out the top of your house, and cold outside air gets pulled in at the bottom. Engineers call it the stack effect. The biggest crack at the bottom of nearly every wood-framed house is the rim joist, where the wood sits down on the foundation. Wood shrinks. Masonry doesn't. In 1977 researchers out of Princeton found windows accounted for around twenty percent of the heat loss in Twin Rivers, New Jersey. The rest was air leakage. The fix is what my grandfather called stitching the sill. Find the leaks with a lit candle on a cold, windy day, clean the joint, and run one continuous bead of sealant all the way around. Two tubes at about five and a half dollars each. Eleven dollars, against eight to fourteen thousand for replacement windows. In this video I show you why the window is the smoke and not the fire, how the stack effect works, the candle test, how to clean and caulk the sill joint, when to use backer rod, how to seal pipe and wire holes, how to weatherstrip the attic hatch, and why old Levi Beiler banked snow against his foundation. I also tell you where it falls short. Stitching the sill will not make the air next to a single-pane window feel warm. Glass is still glass. --- **WHAT YOU WILL NEED** A candle or a stick of incense, and chalk A wire brush or stiff hand brush Caulking gun Two tubes of acoustical sealant or exterior-grade caulk, about $5.50 a tube Foam backer rod, $1 to $2 for twenty feet Gap-filler foam, about $6 Adhesive foam weatherstripping, $8 **A WORD OF CAUTION** Keep the candle flame well away from cobwebs, dust and any exposed fiberglass. If your furnace or water heater lives in the basement, do not seal the vents or louvers that feed them combustion air. Seal the accidental holes, not the ones somebody put there on purpose. Subscribe and I will keep putting up the old, plain ways of keeping a house warm and a dollar in your pocket. #amish #airsealing #heatingbill #homerepair #diyhome #winterizing #energysaving #oldhouse