Working On Insulating the Homefront

I spent the last several days working around the house trying to find out where we are loosing heat.  Our fuel oil bill is out of sight and Lindy and I are trying to figure out how we are spending so much to heat the house.  We did find some spots that needed some repairs so those are done.  I got out my trusty hot glue gun and glued a six inch strip of black fleece to the bottom of our garage door.  We had new weather-stripping installed along the bottom of it this past autumn but daylight was still leaking under it.  If daylight was coming in so was the cold air and the hot air heading out.  That has really seemed to help.

Then I tackled putting a quilt over the door that leads outside from my bedroom.  It's padlocked shut and now I've got a pretty quilt tacked over it.  I do miss looking out the window from the door but that's a small price to pay to hopefully save money on heat.

The kiddos discovered a hole in our crawl space that they could put their fist through.  I found it and it's like 1/4th to 1/2 a cinder block is missing.  Anyhow I took some extra odds and ends of fleece and stuffed them in the hole.  They started to fall through into the crawl space so I grabbed them.  I was trying to think of how to keep them in the hole and I saw some rocks under the eaves of the house.  By golly those rocks were a perfect fit.  I wrapped the fleece around the rocks and put them in the hole.  Then I covered the hole with more fleece and taped it to the wall of the house.  I'm thinking of going to Lowes or Home Depot and buying some of that insulation that's in a spray can and going to the crawl space and filling the rest of the hole from the inside out.

The next project was covering the old dryer vent.  We moved our dryer and moved the vent.  The old vent is now just an opening to the crawl space and we figured cold air is just flowing in.  I, again, took fleece (I have a bit of odds and ends of fleece) and taped it over the old dryer vent. 

On to the window in my bedroom.  A while ago the inside pane broke.  Basically we have just a single pane window.  It's a rather large window and I've been meaning to take out the broken glass but have never gotten around to it.  I never realized how long it would take to pry broken glass out of a window.  I also didn't realize how little pieces of glass can fly.  When I got done with the glass I had those little pieces of glass all around my room, on the bed and on the ironing board.  Everywhere I turned I would see little sparkly glints and find those tiny shards all around.  I can't tell you how long it took me to find all those itty bitty pieces of glass and put them in an old cat litter bucket.  Once I got the window cleaned up I was able to run the double sided tape around the perimeter and put on the shrink wrap plastic.  I got my hair blower, plugged it in and started in one corner and shrink wrapped the window.  I must say, it's not a bad job. 

The last thing we decided to do was to be more efficient with our hot water tank.  Our hot water tank runs off the fuel oil.  Now at bedtime I turn off the hot water tank and turn it on again before we get all the kiddos up.  After breakfast and lunches are made, after teeth are brushed and we're all bathed I turn off the hot water tank and keep it off until school is over and the kiddos are coming home.  That gives us hot water for the evening and for the early morning. 

We're hoping that these repairs plus using some electric space heaters will cut down on our use of fuel oil.  We'll have to wait a month to see.