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Proud Co-Founder of Transition Town High Wycombe
Proud Member of the Low Carbon Chilterns Cooperative
Proud owner & retrofitter of Superhome 59
This website proud host of the High Wycombe Local Food Guide
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Draught Dodgers
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The simplest and cheapest action you can take to make your home
warmer in the north European winter is to stop unnecessary
Draughts from getting in. At this point it is worth drawing a
distinction between a Draught and ventilation. Ventilation is
like the good flower you want in your garden and the Draught is
the unwanted weed. They are both a flow of air into your house
but what separates the two is the quantity and the quality. You
only need a small airflow to keep the air fresh and this air can
be prewarmed in a well designed house. A Draught, on the other
hand, is just too much air at a low temperature and often just
in the wrong place, ie, around doors or right where you sit.
So, kill your Draughts. It is easy and
inexpensive. The methods shown here required a bit of shopping
on the internet or a trip to a DIY store. However, if you are
interested there are other means of stopping Draughts, by such
means as rolled up socks in a pair of tights, that require
little or no expenditure at all.
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Chimney Balloon
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 Yes, you read that right. A "Chimney Balloon" is an obscure
device that is literally a balloon that you inflate inside your
chimney to stop Draughts. You have to measure your chimney from
the inside first. Easier said than done. Then you will need to
look on the internet because this is not the sort of thing you
could find locally. We got ours from
Chimney Cowl Products who sold the smaller 9in x 9in type
for just over £15. This suited our needs but it did seem a
little expensive. We asked around and a friend of ours said she
screwed up newspaper into a plastic bag and showed it up her
chimney when it wasn't in use. This might work for you but not
for us because our Post-Carbon Home is only about 25 years old
so is relatively modern, has a small lined flue with a conical
metal section at the bottom (see photo's).
  This meant it would be difficult to get anything up the chimney
without it staying there forever. At a later stage we are
planning to fit a wood-burning stove. The stove will kill the
Draughts for good of course so this was a stop-gap only (pun
intended). There is already a coal-effect gas fire in the
fireplace. Somehow we object to the idea of burning one fossil
fuel to pretend to be another fossil fuel whilst all the heat
just goes right up the chimney. That seems so crude and
unnecessary in this day and age. This is the 21st Century for
goodness sake. We can do better than that. So we stumped up the
cash and bought the chimney balloon solution. It is poor value
for money as the eventual bill came to over £30 once they added
VAT, the cost of a tube to blow the thing up a nearly
unbelievable £12 postage charge. Where do Chimney Cowl Products
send these things from? The moon? Royal Mail second class
postage would have been fine for a couple of quid. As we are
assessing the product we paid the ridiculous price anyway - just
to try it. However we suggest you shop around a bit more or see
if you can't shove something else up your chimney instead.
The balloon is not very large with an
inflation stalk taking up most of the space. The balloon is
square shaped so it fits the chimney exactly. You can buy all
kinds of shapes and sizes. It does exactly as it says on the
instruction sheet though. You can't complain. It fits exactly.
Shove it up the chimney, inflate, lock the valve to stop the air
from coming out and remove the inflation tube. It hardly took
any time at all. It fits very snug and there are no more
Draughts down our chimney. You get a rather pointless little red
tag to stick in your fireplace to help you remember that it is
there. Just in case you have a senior moment. Joking aside - our
friend did and filled her room with smoke! The chimney balloon
will, as you can imagine, just melt if you light a fire under
it. Bomb goes £30 of your hard earnt cash. I imagine the
pay-back period is atrocious at this 'inflated' (2nd pun!) cost.
But if you never use your fire then you had better get something
like this. Don't forget that a chimney is just a big hole in the
wall. It would be senseless to leave it open to the elements.
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Front Door
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 Our front door was not a big problem. Thankfully the builders or
previous owners had fitted rubberised Draught excluder strips
around the outside of the door externally. However after a
recent cold-snap a brief period on my knees found a howling gale
at the base of the door. This is easily solved. I popped down to
B&Q (DIY Store in the UK) and bought an 800mm strip of
rubberised Draught excluder for external doors. This was planned
to fit to the inside of the door. Measure the door and then
remove the rubber strip from the brass-effect mounting strip.
Take a junior hack-saw and remove the excess from the metal
strip. Slide the rubber strip back in and use pliers to snip off
the excess at the end. Remember to crimp the ends to stop the
rubber from sliding out.
  Now for the tricky part. Put the Draught excluder into position
on the closed door. Use a bradawl to make a hole for one screw
at one end. Then screw on that end. Then go to the other end and
try and get everything even. Secure that end with a screw (the
pack came with screws supplied). At this moment open and close
the door to see if the strip interferes with anything. We
secured ours to the door so that it would not get trodden on by
people walking through the door. This is only correct but you
have to check you don't foul something else upon opening. In our
case the strip would not seal properly as it caught of a strip
of wood securing the end of the wooden flooring.
  So I removed the strip and secured it again a couple of
millimeters higher up and tried again. Success. Then secure in
the rest of the screws. The strip is quite flexible so you can
contour it if the door edge is not quite straight. This went
well but the rubber strip would not seal tight to the bottom of
the door frame as the two didn't line up. No problem. Take a
section of "P" section foam Draught excluder (also available
from any DIY store) and attach this to the bottom of the door
frame (with the door open of course). Close the door and you
should find a tight snug fit and no more Draughts.
Job done.
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Letter Box
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 Our letter box did have a twin brush seal installed at some
previous point. However it was worn out, bent and broken. Within
a couple of weeks of us moving in, the tape holding it together
gave out and it fell apart. Useless. The letter slot is larger
than the standard at 9cm high rather than 8cm. This is because
the outer flap folds inwards so the extra cm allows the flap to
not foul the flow of letters. All well and good but a trip to
B&Q showed they only had the 8cm variety of letterbox brush
seals. No problem though - the previous owners had nailed a
strip of white hardboard along the top edge of the internal door
to block off the extra 1cm of space. This fix was a little
flimsy but good enough for the purpose.
  The old brush seal was removed and the new one simply slotted
into the same position. Mark the positions of the new holes with
a bradawl and screw on the new brush seal. The only bit of fun
in the entire job was applying transparent mastic sealant around
the edge of the new brush seal and white hardboard section. This
was (obviously) to stop Draughts coming around the side of the
fitting but also helped secure everything as the fixture is a
bit 'plasticy' and flimsy. I am sure after the postman has
shoved small packets through it one hundred times it could just
snap and fall off... So it needs all the added strength you can
give it. Job done.
***NOTE added 29th April 2009*** We had a problem with
this fit you should be aware of. There was insufficient
clearence between the letterbox flap and the brush strip. Since
the flap opened inwards it would jam open against the brush! The
brush had to be removed and a batton strip added between brush
and door to give adequate clearence. Now the flap closes
correctly. Something to keep in mind.
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Letterbox update - November 2013
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 In
2012 we applied internal insulation to the inside of the front
door (you can read about that further below) but left the
letterbox as it was. However by the summer of 2013 we found the
external letterbox flap spring has broken. So it was permanently
ajar letting in a draft - it was time for an upgrade! I removed
the brush seal inside and external fitting for examination. The
external unit was that which originally came with the door
fitted in the 1980s. I checked online and found something
extremely similar from a company called "Casting in Style". I
also found replacement letterbox flap springs from Amazon [of
all people]. However I was not confident that the springs could
be fitted so I opted to replace the entire unit. Whilst on the
internet, looking for replacement letterboxes, I came across a
product called "Ecoflap".
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examined the details and it looked like a good replacement for
the internal brush seal (because it has a flap that completely
seals the letterbox from draughts). So I ordered both and they
rapidly arrived in the post. I won't bored you with the details
of fitting the external unit but we will show you the Ecoflap
for its novelty value. As you can see, from these photos, it is
a plastic unit with a flap that not only swivels on a central
pivot but it also lifts giving plenty of room for you post to
get through!
The Eco flap's features suggest that it cannot be blown open by
a gust of wind because of the position of the pivot being
towards the bottom not at the top. Since the largest area of the
flap is at the top then wind should keep it shut. Of course wind
can blow the other way. We guess the Ecoflap designers assume
this is a less likely scenario. We have to say that generally
the Ecoflap appears more effective that the brush seal so we
shall see how it goes. It can't be any worse! |
Door update - April 2012
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1) A Thermal Image
taken in early December 2011 showed the inside of the
front door & what we already
knew - the front door on the north side of the house was
relatively paper-thin and leaking heat. It is a
1980's-vintage wooden door. The darker the blue the
colder the area - this revealed the inner frame is cold
whilst the single-pane glass window and letter box are
colder. It is about 3C outside. The letter box is a
tough nut to crack as it had already been treated.
However the inner frame and single-plane glass could be
upgraded as a DIY task.
2) So here we are in April 2012 - with a bit of time,
some daylight and some clement weather. So we start
work. This photo shows the door before work started.
Note that the thermal images didn't show any significant
problem with the locks but we decided to add a cover for
the key-hole which we will come to later. There wasn't
much of a draft problem around the frame either but we
were concerned that the way we had insulated the frame
meant that the top and bottom corners got pushed out
making the draught-proofing less effective in those
corners. So we decided
to apply another form of draught-proofing on the inside
of the door.
3) This upgrade would require filling the inner frames
with polystyrene plugs. Being an old metric door the
inner frame is 1 inch deep. Luckily enough Wickes sell
an inch thick sheet of polystyrene. (Still an
unbelievable £5 a sheet.) This was cut to
shape and inserted. I tight-fit meant that no glue was
required to hold it in place. Later on any small gaps
were filled with Wickes "Instant Grab Adhesive" so as to
provide a continuous barrier. One concern about this
form of upgrade is the possibility of trapping damp
inside the door frame. We considered spraying the door
with an anti-fungal treatment but decided not to as
this would only have been effective for a few months and
may have introduced the damp we wanted to avoid. So we
did without. If damp rots the door from the inside then
- one day - we will need to replace it with a uPVC unit.
4) The same Wickes "Instant Grab Adhesive" was
used to attach
an acrylic pane that fits neatly inside a recess over
the existing glass pane. We wanted to find a small
offcut in the offcuts-bin at Homebase but none was
available so we had to buy an entire sheet only to use
one small corner. This cost about £18. After first
install some damp condensate formed inside the glass but
this didappeared after a few days. As this is not a
sealed unit and is surrounded by a "breathing" porous
wood surface then this is going to be a common
occurence. |
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5) Fitting the
acrylic panel.
6) Using the Wickes "Instant Grab Adhesive" again the
polystyrene plugs are secured.
7) To cover up the polystyrene plugs we chose a
water-resistant MDF wall panelling ("EASipanel") set
available from Homebase. They were not cheap - about £30
for four - an absurd price. A lot of careful measuring and
mark-up allowed us to cut the panels to shape. The
panels join together along a slotted-edge so each upper
and lower panel is in two-parts - as is visible in this
photo. Conveniently one of these edges formed the edge
of the window panel. The panels were cut on a bench-saw
with only one small section using a jig-saw.
8) First the panels were glued together (we used PVA)
then the Wickes "Instant Grab Adehsive" was used in
large quantities across the polystyrene panels in beads.
Then it was just a case of positioning the panels over
top and nailing them into position. |
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9) The door with
the over-panels in place. The panels were chosen because
they had an embossed wooden pattern that resembled the
wooden door.
10) After a swift sanding-down comes a
drop of gloss
white paint. The door was originally an oppressive
dark-brown. It may have been a mistake to have skipped
the undercoat. It too two coats of solvent-based paint
and two coats of water-based paint to achieve the final
result. We recommend a non-drip paint. At this point we
also used white sealant to make a neat job around the
acrylic window panel - some masking tape helped.
11) Here we are nailing on the internal door draught
strip. The one we chose was from B&Q and designed to be
used just on the frame. We couldn't use it as designed
so had to fix a strip to both door and frame so they
over-lapped. This worked well but meant we ran out of
strip on the upper-left of the door (just visible). To
this day we have been unable to locate long enough
sections of draughtproof strip to cover an entire door
of THIS nature. You can buy the strips for the bottom of
the door - but to do so would have meant buying lots of those sections
making the project prohibitively expensive. As it was;
the sections we purchased still cost £19. The paint we
already had.
12) The finished article looking like a new door. The
result is also more soundproof. |
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13)
A close-up of the door-lock showing the small cover.
This item was added later and is available from most DIY
stores - we purchased ours from B&Q. it was a
dissappointing item as it was too stiff to work. So we
had to bend it, oil it and work it to make the cover
drop in front of the keyhole. However it left a large
gap between the cover and the hole somewhat defeating
the purpose. These items are quite expensive so choose
wisely.
14) There was limited space around
keyhole and the draught strip fouled the lock cover. So
we cut a small fragment of the strip away to allow the
lock cover the swing clear.
Conclusion: We are pleased with how
this job done worked out but it still cost us an
eye-watering £80 for a relatively simple improvement.
However, compare that to the £800 it might have cost to
put in a UPVC door. It will see us good for a few years.
We'll check out its performance in the winter. For now
we can say that during a cold, wet and windy spell at
the end of April it made a detectable difference to the
feel of the entry hall.
New photo 15) Picture taken 22nd
December 2012 with external temperature about 10C. This
photo cannot be compared to the one taken a year earlier
because of the different external temperature, but
note how the letterbox remains the coldest point. The
insulated panels are now as warm as the internal walls -
a massive improvement. The frame should be behaving the
same as it was before but the window is a bit warmer.
The small cover over the keyhole is also doing its job.
It seems we have two small thermal bridges at the bottom
of the door corners. This hallway is now much more
comfortable than before. |
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Internal Door
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  One of the first DIY tasks, when we came to this new HQ, was to
sort out the dreadful fit around this internal door that leads
from front door to lounge. The door is warped out of shape and,
although it closes well, it leaves vast gaps around top, bottom
and side. So the first thing we did was to get a roll of "P"
section foam strip and stick it around the inside of the door
frame. This gave it a tight fit and stopped it from rattling. It
also stopped most of the Draught but we recognised early on that
we would have to come back and fix the door underside. There was
a gap big enough to put your fingers under.
 You may ask why if we have sealed in the front door why would we
bother with this one? Well, think of it as security in depth.
You may wish to answer the front door and not let in a Draught
so having a good seal on the inner door to this 'air-lock' is
essential. Besides it is all good 'belt and braces'. The Draught
excluder chosen for this job was also from B&Q and was a
brush-type. You have to use this on internal doors because
unlike external doors there is no lip underfoot for the seal to
butt-up against. Hence the seal has to be in contact with the
floor making a brush variety more appropriate. Fixing this in
place is essentially the same procedure as for the rubber seal
on the external door. Measure the width and then cut off the
excess. Crimp the end of the brush to stop it all falling out.
Press into place against the closed door and mark the holes with
a bradawl. Then just screw it in place. Do open and close the
door a few times during this to make sure the door seal doesn't
jam against anything. Sometimes floors are uneven so be careful.
There were not enough holes in the strip so I added an extra one
at one end. Job done.
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Conservatory Doors
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  The
Conservatory and the doors leading to them are somewhat of a
joke. The doors are the original wooden ones for the house so
have no double-glazing. Hence the conservatory is the second
layer of glass! It is better than nothing but the conservatory
isn't double-glazed either. It will have to go - as will these
wooden doors. However, that is for the future. The doors do fit
very well and still have the original seals around them. However
the seals at the bottom had perished whilst there was no seal
where the two doors joined. We removed any ineffectual seal and
cleaned up. Then we took our favourite "P" section foam strip
(we get through a lot of this stuff) and stuck it around the
edge.
Well, almost. There wasn't quite enough
space for the sealing strip between the doors so the doors would
not lock properly afterwards. Hence it was a matter of taking to
the lock with a file to open the hole out a little. Job done.
Again.
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Summary
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All the windows in the house are double
glazed so there is no more work there. Within a few months of
moving in we did get the old wooden doors between garden &
garage, and from the kitchen-to-garage, replaced with modern
double-glazed security doors. Hence no Draughts there. However,
there is always more to be done in future:
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We can fit additional plastic glazing
panels to those wooden doors to the Conservatory. This would
be a cheap and cheerful solution to keeping the lounge warm
before replacing the doors completely. You can buy thin film
plastic but if you have a small child they will just tear
it.
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There is also an old wood-framed,
single-glazed, window in the garage that is original to the
house. Obviously we don't heat the garage but it does form a
thermal barrier to the kitchen next to it, and the bedroom
above it. The garage houses an occasionally warm car and a
warm boiler. Hence if that heat can be retained for longer
it will help keep the rest of the house warm too. The garage
door was replaced by a roller unit that is made up of
foam-filled metal slats. That offers up quite a good thermal
barrier plus it seals much better than the old 'up-and-over'
garage door. This is all to the good. Hence we are
considering getting some secondary glazing for the garage
window too.
As we say - think of
defence against cold and Draughts as coming in depth. Don't
rely upon just one layer, fix two or more for added warmth.
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