weather-proofing our apartment
January 6th, 2006 by Lawrence David
gee-whiz, i dropped over a dozen hamiltons on our last heating bill. although this is new england, i still find that staggering since our apartment really only has 4 rooms.
so, like any good american, i’ve declared war – on natural gas usage in our home. christina and i have made several home depot runs in the past few days alone. i’ve caulked the bejeesus out of our window frames and we’ve just finished seran-wrapping our windows. ok, ok, its not really seran wrap – it’s this funky plastic film that you cover your windows with and then heat shrink with a hair dryer. doing this buys you a nice air pocket between the window and your room; this is useful since air conducts heat much more slowly than something like glass. i’ve even toyed with getting the green light from our landlord to insulate our own floors, from our basement below. (prognosis on that is poor … it’s gonna cost several hundred dollars, which is a lot of money to spend on something you don’t own.) finally, i’ve installed a programmable thermostat. the energy star sticker on that sucker claims we’ll save “10-30%” on our heating bills. take that nstar!
of all the heat transfer methods, convection moves heat the fastest. and thats where infiltration comes in. infiltration is basically the air leakage though your walls and windows. for any kind of wooden house, there is tons of infiltration, air just breezes in through walls and windows, there’s very little you can do about it. even the best made windows still leak. the heat-shrink (which is what that saran wrap stuff actually is) helps alot in keeping your warm air inside the house, which is good. after your windows, the next largest heat loss is through your walls, but not much you can do about that, unless you turn the inside of your house into some kind of hermetically sealed bubble
but then where will you get the air to breathe?! 
Convection works so well that it is what makes the cooper cooler work!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007LJNB4/qid=1136609434/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-4572982-9867134?n=507846&s=home-garden&v=glance
air is for the weak!