Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.

Stop.

Lets start working the problem, rather than letting the problem work us.

You need to agree that this is going to be a LONG thread, and invoke a lot of input.

You in for this?

Would I have posted this if I did not want input??

Even tight houses have infiltration. There are many places you could still have leaks. I am not surprised that adding insulation to the attic did nothing to stop drafts, although it should save some energy. However, don't spend more time or money putting more insulation in the attic. The way insulation works, the first inch is what saves the most and succeeding amounts save less and less because there is less to save. For example, compared to no insulation in the attic, 5" of insulation would prevent about 90% of the heat loss, 10" would prevent about 94% of the heat loss, and 15" would prevent about 96% of the heat loss. So going up from, say 15" to 20" might save you maybe 1% more, etc.

I'm betting that you have a bunch of air leaks still, and that could include at the baseboards, as well as poorly sealed ducts in your heating system, and in places that might not be obvious. One way to get started figuring this out is by using a specialty smoke pencil tool that will help you see where the drafts are coming from, or you might even just use a stick of incense as you go around the rooms. This is most effective if you have someone bring a blower to your house that provides positive air pressure, because the pressure will force out air at all of the leak points and you can readily see the smoke exiting along with it. Here is a little more info:

Detecting air leaks

One other issue. You say you've replaced all the windows. Did the installers seal all around the perimeter of the windows when they were installed. If they didn't, you could have a lot of air leaks at the windows, and, if the windows are not all thermopane, you can feel chilly sitting near a window due to the convection currents rolling down the interior side of the glass.

Thanks for the input kudzu9. The entire middle of my attic was almost bare due to some projects done over the years in terms of running a few electrical lines, skylight repairs, etc. I had to buy 10 bags to get the blower rental for free, so I chose to go overboard instead of sell the unused bags. What can I say, I was having fun using the blower.

Regarding the windows, they have been sealed with caulk around the outside and any spaces inside were filled with that lovely expanding foam stuff. They are not at all high end thermal windows, just your bottom end Anderson replacement double pane window. I'm going to try the bubble wrap trick to see if it just air coming right through the panes.

The people who did my home energy audit did put the blower on my door, but did not mention any signs of air leakage which baffles me since it's a very drafty house. All they said was, I've done a good job sealing it up.

There is no duct work to speak of since I do not have forced air. The only holes in my floor are where the baseboard pipe comes up into each room. I will check to see if that is a possible source.

I'll try the incense stick again and see where my "new" leaks are.

pennymsm-

I have a newer house (15 years old) that I thought was pretty tight, and it is. However, I still have found a couple of places where I had leaks, and one of them is where the wall sits on the foundation. According to our local energy code, that junction is supposed to be sealed with caulk or foam in new construction, but I've found a couple of places where that wasn't done properly; one of the air leaks was non-obvious but so bad that it allowed the in-wall water supply to my kitchen sink to freeze. So be aware that you don't have to see holes or cracks to have a problem. You should test all along the baseboards to see if there is anything going on there.

Also, are you on a slab or do you have a basement or what? And do you have any wall insulation or floor insulation?

It's a raised ranch, so it's a 50% above grade basement foundation. There is no floor insulation between the basement and main level, just the walls which are 2x4 construction.

Is that basement directly heated or does it just pick up a bit of heat from the rest of the house? A combination of a cool/cold basement, plus air leaks to the outside via the basement, plus air exchange through cracks and under doors between the basement and the rest of the house could explain some of the problems. Are you also saying the walls have zero insulation?

No the basement is heated. It's a separate zone. Since it's half in the ground, it holds heat better than my main floor. The walls are insulated. Another issue is I have a drive under garage which I now feel are the dumbest thing ever. Two of my bedrooms are directly over the garage. I'm pretty sure the garage ceiling is insulated, but it doesn't seem to help much. It's worth mentioning, the drafts seem to disappear when the house is blanketed in snow. That's kind of why I was thinking attic, but apparently that was wrong. I don't know if that snow thing is a clue of what's going on.

Only other thing I can think of is poorly insulated ceiling over the garage. Mike Holmes has had a couple of instances on his home improvement show where the ceiling over the garage was pretty much insulated except some gaps around the exterior and it was letting in tremendous amounts of cold air. It's hard to assess this without removing sheetrock, though. At least cut a couple of small holes in that ceiling to confirm you do indeed have insulation, and do a smoke test at these holes to see if there is air movement. If you have only a thin layer of insulation and/or you have air infiltration from the perimeter into the space between the garage ceiling and the bedroom floor you could have a lot of draft and heat loss that way.

As for a logical explanation of snow blanketing on the roof having an effect, now that you are fully insulated in the attic, I'm stumped.

I'm sure adding the attic stuff did not hurt. I've noticed the past few winters, the snow melts off my roof before the houses around me, so I was heating my attic before now. I went up there today to finish up and it was nice and cold up there like it should be.

I will check the exterior wall in the garage. The thing is, there is a good 1/2 gap around the doors, so I figure what's the use. I've tried to snug that space up, but the doors might as well be open on windy days. I figure the best I can do is just make sure what's in the garage stays in the garage.

If I do find leaks where the foundation meets the house, I take it I attempt to seal that from the outside with a bead of caulk?

A proper audit with a blower door and IR camera will help pinpoint the leaks. The wall gaskets are fine, but most often installed improperly (no offense as even pros put them in wrong).

I would start with the blower door test and IR inspection.

Blower test was done years ago. They told me everything was fine...completely useless at least in my case

What do you mean they told you everything was fine? They should have given you numbers. Did they? Even better would have been for them to go around and determine where the leaks were occurring.

I agree...it sounds like the blower door folks were not all that competent. A proper blower test with smoke pencils being used at the same time would determine whether there are significant remaining air leaks.

+1 on IR camera, blower door, and smoke test. Sounds like you got a dud for an energy audit, it's worth trying again with the specific goal of tracking down the leaks. If you do it on a cold day you should be able to see plumes of cold air being sucked in at the leak points. You can rent an IR camera if you want to look for yourself.

When they did the audit did they give you a report with the ACH50/hr number for your house? For a new home to meet the stretch energy code that number should be about 3, I think. Older homes are often up around 25. When we started working on our house I think we were over 100-- reported as too high to measure accurately. I have a bit more work to do before we get them back for a "final" number, but our fuel use is down 90%, so I'm guessing it's better.

After you've diagnosed the problems, and depending what you find, spray foam can be a good solution to many small leaks everywhere, a situation you may be in. From your description you probably have some big leaks that should be dealt with first (we could see daylight through a 1" gap around our chimney, for example, where the siding had pulled away from the brick).

I have similar concerns with my place, I have about one thing left to look at, the windows. I will not replace them concerning the installation costs, they appear to have been replaced recently by the previous owner, but they are cold to the touch and inefficient. I am looking into interior storm windows. We will see how that goes, but I have done the plastic with the double sided tape (very ghetto style) and that seemed to have help the last couple years just tired of doing it every year and how it looks.

as utility companies got into energy "audits" it lowered the bar of service.

but otoh...what do you really expect for a basically free audit by people

recommended by utility company? keep in mind that utility companies

highest standard is to reduce costs below 20%.

where as someone with experience prior to this flood of bad auditing

can provide at the least 30% savings. in many existing homes savings

can be 50%.

a competent blower door test not only tells you amount of leakage

but also will pinpoint leakage sites. you don't need ir camera,

although it makes a nice visual for the homeowner. we have

been doing blower door testing since the 90's very successfully.

hire an independent, experienced energy rater, with experience

in existing homes. I've been doing this for over 15 years, & have

yet to give away free light bulbs or use any hook to get business.

I never advertised, all work is word of mouth.

long before & long after this free audit stuff came around there

were lots of us providing actual service.

you just need to look in a better place for dedicated efficiency

experts, not some newbie with a blower door & boxes of freebies.

start at www.resnet.us

and remember, experience in existing construction.

we can walk you through some basic sealing.

what type of interior walls do you have?

sheetrock with ceiling moldings, sheetrock with no ceiling moldings?

I think you said no recessed lights.

fireplace? how do you heat/cool? & where is this equip located?

best of luck & sorry to read of another 'audit' gone wrong.

been reading these stories for a couple of years now...sigh.

Maybe the drafts stop when you have a blanket of snow, because the snow covers a leak where the house joins the foundation. I watched an energy audit video, and they said that's really common. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJoAw5KVgtA

Does your snow get high enough that it covers the connection between the foundation and the sill plate? When you said it was a 50% above grade foundation, it sounded like this connection point was pretty high off the ground. However maybe I misinterpreted what you said. If this connection does get covered, I think Becky is onto something.

Lot's of good stuff to check out. Keep it coming guys.

Energy_rater, sadly, I did pay for the audit. It was subsidized through the power company, but was still $100 useless bucks. My walls are sheetrock with no crown molding, so I will check the seal at the top. I did most of the interior walls from the attic with spary foam, but could only reach so far. I found a similar leak in the skylights last year and sealed that up. No fireplace, just a free standing wood stove in the basement. I'll check the area around the timble to the outsie. No recessed lights, so I'm good there. I sealed everything else up via the attic before I added the insulation.

rwiegand, No I was given no ACH50/hr number, just some stupid light bulbs.

becky, thanks for posting that video. It does give me some ideas of where to look next.

kudzu9, I agree Becky may be on to something. The warmest my house ever is in the winter is after a big snow storm. Yes, my foundation is a good 2' to 3' off the ground, but we had well over 4' of snow last year. I will be investigating the area around the foundation next.

I noticed my house stayed about 2 degrees warmer than in years past with the same outside temps, so I guess I've made a little progress.

After you had a chance to investigate some of these things it would be great if you could repost here. I also suggest that you give a call to the customer service department of the utility. I used to work as the manager of the energy conservation program design group for a public utility. I can tell you that if we had gotten a call about a situation like this we would want to get it fixed, and we would also have appreciated feedback about a less-than-satisfactory contractor experience. Many utilities are responsive to such requests because they are serious about conservation and they don't want complaints going to the Public Utility Commission. All it will take to find out is a phone call, and you might be pleased with their response. I wouldn't be surprised if you were able to talk them into redoing it for free. Good luck.

$100 is very very inexpensive for a comprehensive audit.

but it is what it is.

the good news is the rooms are sealed at wall/ceiling.

usually in homes with ceiling moldings, the gap at

wall to ceiling is covered up, & not sealed. so you

are one step ahead of the game there.

in home efficiency the importance of the location of the air leakage

counts.

most efficient is to seal the air barrier between living & attic

space. you are good with the leakage site described above,

and having no recessed lights.

second most efficient place to seal/insulate is the floor.

this is your air barrier between crawlspace & conditioned

space.

when the house was built, chances are the sole plate of the

exterior walls was not sealed to the subfloor.

again..a tiny leakage site that quickly adds up to a lot of

leakage, given the amount of wall area.

ideally sill seal or caulk would have sealed sole plate

to subfloor...how to retrofit now?

caulk top of floor molding to wall, and bottom of molding

to floor (if not carpet) or take floor moldings up, caulk &

re-install moldings.

if you have pets...you do not want to caulk moldings to floor

as the caulk will always collect pet hair. (this I know

from personal experience...)

when you talk of feeling cold air circulating (in first post)

where do you feel the air? at your feet? shoulder height?

more details needed.

but back to floors over crawlspaces...no insulation in the

floor?

is the cold you feel from the floor area?

post more details & we will walk you through some basic

air sealing. drop me an email & I'll share info from lsu ag center's

study on air sealing floors of raised homes.

we have found that the best way to air seal & insulate floors

is spray foam insulation. closed cell...3". makes a world of difference.

pricy, but you air seal & insulate in one step.

having done several homes where we manually sealed holes,

then insulated with fg batts & came back on the bottom of the

joists with 1" cc foam sheathing...it is the same $$ as spray

foam. and a lot less labor intensive.

in the meantime here is some excellent air sealing info

from southface inst.

http://www.southface.org/default-interior/documents/airsealingkeypoints.pdf

best of luck

energy_rater, thanks so much for the info. Good to hear about the ceilings. The first thing I did when I moved into that house was scrape off all the popcorn ceiling and there was tape going from the top of the wall to the ceiling. Would it still benefit me to put a bead of clear caulk up there?

The air I feel moving around is at floor level, near my feet. I have baseboard oil heat. Would I even be able to get under there with caulk to seal that up?

I have wood floors, so I will just caulk the top of the trim if that will help. Unfortunately the finished basement below is a drop ceiling with no insulation, so little can be done there unless maybe I can nail in some of that pink styrofoam looking stuff between the joists? Would that accomplish anything?

I poked around outside today and looked under the siding where it meets the foundation. The wood shingles are still there from the original siding, then a piece of pink foam stuff, and then the newer siding. There's something along the bottom that looks like wool or felt sticking out at the very bottom. Is there anything I can do from the outside, of just leave that alone?

Thanks for the link on the airsealing points of interest.

+1

If someone is doing and audit for $100, they aren't doing an audit.

If the basement ceiling is a drop ceiling, a proper audit and air sealing workscope would included sealing of the basement rim joist.

You need a proper audit and air sealing workscope as a result of the findings. It will be impossible for us to tell you about the home without some good data points on it and leakage testing.

re floor moldings.when you seal off one escape route for air leakage,,,it finds another

area to leak from. so caulking just the top of the floor moldings would just

cause the air to come out between molding & floor.

you may have to solve this from another angle.

we don't have basements here in my part of La. so you'll have

to describe the 1/2 of basement that isn't conditioned space.

when you feel the air movement at your feet...is it in the

crawlspace portion of the house...or the finished basement?

remove a tile from the drop ceiling & post pic of exterior wall.

then see if you can get a pic of crawlspace.

that would really help.

wow...utility audits are a joke. they want to save at max 15%

energy costs. after all they sell the energy to us.

an independent audit savings are 30% at minimum.

most existing homes can cut the utility costs by 50%...

if the rater/auditor & homeowner work together.

many of my jobs are staged to give homeowner time

to afford some of the bigger ticket items. like spray foam

or hvac equipment.