This $8 Thing Keeps Heat Inside and Cold Air Out All Winter

Built to Last — the old farm ways, all in one book: https://ezrakaine.com How do you stop cold air coming through old windows without replacing them? Put your hand down low by the bottom of a shut, latched window. Feel that? That's a river of cold air pouring across your floor. In our 1890 farmhouse the floor by the parlor window read 51 degrees while my knee read 64. The window company wanted $14,000 to replace every window in the house. These windows are 130 years old and the wood is sound. They didn't need replacing. They just leaked, and a leak is cheap to fix. A brass latch, an $8 roll of rope caulk and a board over the curtains fixed most of it. The floor went from 51°F to 60°F, and we burned close to a face cord less wood that winter. The Department of Energy figures a quarter to a third of the heat a house uses goes in or out through the windows. But half of that cold isn't coming through any crack at all. It's coming off the glass. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN • The screwdriver test that tells you if a window is rotten or just leaky • How to find every draft in ten minutes with something from your kitchen drawer • The free fix already on almost every old window, and why most people use it wrong • Rope caulk: about $8 for six windows, and it peels back out in April • Stopping drafts under doors • The two windows you should never seal shut • What your curtains do at night — the opposite of what you think — and the old pelmet board that stops it • Bubble wrap and shrink film on the glass: what they really do • $14,000 in new windows vs about $10 in fixes Keep one window in every bedroom that opens easily, because that's your way out in a fire. And don't seal kitchens and bathrooms airtight. Steam with nowhere to go ends up on cold glass, and that's how mold starts on a windowsill. Tell me in the comments: what state are you in, what's the coldest room in your house, and what did you find when you went looking? I'll bet somebody found a worse leak than my parlor outlet. These windows never needed replacing. They just needed somebody to shut them right. #WindowDrafts #StayWarm #OldHouse #Winterize #HeatingBill #DIY #Homesteading #OldWaysAreBest #EnergySaving #Farmhouse #SelfReliance #WinterPrep