5 steps to weatherstripping your home for winter

Caulking and weatherstripping your home not only serve to keep out winter's cold but can also help reduce your energy use. The result? Savings for you and a smaller carbon footprint. Here are five steps to weatherstripping your home for winter that really work.

Before you begin, inspect your home for any holes, leaks and gaps.

• These gaps may be allowing your heat (and air conditioned air in the summer) to escape.
• What's more, they may also provide pests with an open "door" into your home; could be allowing water to seep through, and may be causing condensation to occur on windows.

A great way to find gaps is by walking around your home with a burning stick of incense, holding it where you suspect there might be gaps.

• The smoke coming from the incense stick will reveal significant leaks by moving with the air flow.

For your largest gaps, cracks and holes, use a caulk gun and a tube of caulk.

• Common problem areas are often around vents and pipes as well as where different building materials join.

To apply caulk

• Insert a fresh tube of caulk in your caulk gun.
• Cut off the tip of the nozzle with strong shears, a utility knife or box cutter. Ensure the cut is at an angle.
• Pierce the inner membrane.
• Squeeze caulk into those large cracks, holes and gaps, applying slowly to lay down a smooth, regular bead of caulk along the gap.

For larger holes, you may need to squeeze a bunch of caulk directly into the gap, like toothpaste.

Foam-style, self-adhesive weatherstripping is durable, effective and best of all, easy to install.

To weatherstrip windows

• Unroll the stripping and cut it to the required length.
• Peel away the liner to stick the self-adhesive side to the target area.
• After application, press along the length of the newly installed weatherstripping to ensure it fits snugly and securely with your window.

Doors are a huge source of drafty air leaks. This variety of weatherstripping for doors is more durable than regular self-adhesive foam, which is why it's ideal for sealing around entry doors.

To weatherstrip doors

• Use tin snips or heavy shop scissors to cut the strips to the desired length.
• Tack them into place on each door using a hammer and short nails.
• Some weatherstripping for doors comes as a self-adhesive. You may still want to tack it down with short nails, since frequent use may cause it to come unstuck.

For more substantial door gaps, strips with vinyl inserts are available and much more effective. However, they require a bit more work to install.

To add vinyl inserts on larger doors

• Choose from metal or wood materials and cut each strip to the desired length.
• Nail the strip flush with the door frame and door jamb.

Because not all doors are square and the floor in your home may be slanted, you'll need to tweak where the vinyl strip sits (as well as its angle) to ensure any gaps are sealed off.

• For this reason, nail one end first while installing the insert. Then, using a pencil, mark where the other nails should go after you've ensured there's no more gap visible. Only at this time should you hammer in the last nails.

A drafty home is an inefficient one, which wastes both heat and money. Fortunately, making it warmer and cozier by plugging air leaks is easier than you think, which means you won’t need to rely on heavy blankets and space heaters this winter to stay toasty.