The CANDLE Trick That Finds the WINTER DRAFTS You Cannot Feel

🔗 Save $6,000 A Year with My Complete Amish Home-Saving Method I teach: https://eliasyoder.com You have done the obvious things and that room is still cold. The towel against the door, the long sausage draught stopper, your hand felt round the window frame and along the skirting and found nothing. There is air moving through that room right now, steadily, all day and all night, and you cannot feel most of it because your hand is not sensitive enough. But a flame is. And there is one more thing, which is why the towel under the door never fixed anything. You have been looking at the wrong end of the house. My grandfather taught me with a candle on a January evening. I had stuffed a rag under the back room door and it had made no difference. He had me hold the flame low at that door and it leaned hard into the room, cold air coming in just as I thought. Then he took me up to the attic hatch and had me hold the candle close to the edge of it, and the flame leaned the other way, up and out. Same house, same minute, two gaps, air going opposite ways. He asked which one was the leak. I said the bottom one, because it was the one I could feel. He said no. The one at the top is doing it. Stop that one and the one at the bottom stops on its own. What we go through: Why warm air leaving the top of a house is what pulls cold air in at the bottom Why sealing every gap at floor level and leaving the hatch alone does almost nothing Why an incense stick or a blown-out candle shows you more than a flame Picking the right day, and the free version using wind instead of fans Turning on your extractor fans to exaggerate every leak in the house Where to walk, in order, and why the top of the house comes first What you are actually watching for, which is a steady lean rather than a gust Caulk, weatherstrip, foam gaskets and what belongs where The order to fix them in, so you feel the benefit before you lose heart Why you walk it again after you think you are done Said before any of the method, because it is not negotiable. Put out every fire and turn off every burner before you start. A house being sucked at by extractor fans, with a flue in it, can pull fumes back down that flue into the room you are standing in. That is carbon monoxide and you cannot smell it. Fires out first, every time. And never use a flame near a gas appliance, a gas line, or anywhere you suspect a gas leak. If you can smell gas you go outside and telephone somebody. The plain limit, and it matters as much as the method. Do not seal a house up tight. Your household puts a great deal of water into the air every day, and if none of it can get out you will have damp and mould on the cold walls by February. What you are stopping is the slow uncontrolled leaking that costs you money all winter. Then you air on purpose, briefly, when you choose to. And if you have a wood stove, a gas fire or a boiler in the house, those need air to burn and to vent properly, so talk to whoever services them before you make the place much tighter. This week, wait for a cold windy evening. Fires out, burners off, windows and doors shut, bathroom fan and cooker hood on, candle lit. Then start at the attic hatch rather than the front door. Tell me in the comments where you found the worst one, because it is almost never where people expect. And if you have told me your county before, tell me instead how old your house is and whether the hatch into your roof is nothing but a board laid in a hole. Next time we go underneath the house, because cold coming up through a floor is often telling you about more than air. I gathered the whole of it into a book at eliasyoder dot com. The people who built this country with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it. #EliasYoder #Drafts #DraughtProofing #StackEffect #HeatingBill #WinterTips #HomeRepair #AtticHatch #Weatherstrip #OldHouse #OldWays #SelfReliance #DIY #Insulation #EnergySaving