Old Windows and the lost heat or air conditioning you lose with them.

When you have an older house and there are drafts around your windows, you'll lose your heating or cooling efficiency.  Sometimes, we cannot replace all our windows with new high efficiency widows and need to find alternative options.

As a rental unit owner (landlord), I have found a number of small 'Do It Yourself' methods that have helped my bottomline in the heating and cooling of my rental units.  I have always attempted to upgrade one window per unit per year until each unit has all new efficient windows.  I also upgrade the exterior doors first but I'll speak about that another time.

Windows that leak air, can cost you hundreds of dollars per year.  Ideally, replacing your windows will be the best method, however, costly.  This window you see was replaced by someone before I purchased this rental unit.  You can see that the trim was added after and even though they had put in a good window, there were air leaks around the trim.  I removed the trim on the top and both sides.  What I found was very sad.  The new drywall was placed up against the window yes but no insulation was either blown in or placed into the window during installation.

Tools you will require:

• 2 inch putty knife
• Screwdriver(s) especially a flat head
• caulking, and caulking gun
• hammer
• wrecking bar, small one foot long for removing trim

Step one, is to view the window itself and decide weather the widow trim has air leaks.  Usually, if your home is old enough that it doesn't have any insulation in its walls, you will have air leaks around the window trim.

Remove the trim around the window but take care not to damage it.  Some older windows may have many coats of paint on the windows which makes it more difficult to remove.  Take your time.  You do not want to damage your walls or the trim.  I suggest that you have a small flat piece of metal to place under your prying tools so you do not damage the walls.  Use a utility knife to cut at the seams of the trim.  You may need to use your flat head screwdriver and a hammer to tap at the space to crack the paint.  you need to remove the trim in sections.

Once you have the trim removed, you need to determine weather you need to purchase some slow expansion insulation foam.  Usually, large gaps under the trim will be revealed once removed.  I suggest that you do a little digging with your flat head screwdriver to locate any holes that you could fill with slow expansion foam.  In the window above, I found about 12 small spaces that I could place the straw from the foam into and force the slow expansion foam into it.  I did each hole only a little bit and continuted around the window three times to keep the foam even.  Over filling any section can cause your walls to bulge.   This is also why we use slow expansion foam.  You have less chance of damage from the foam expanding.  One thing you need to know is that you dont use the foam to fill small areas.  Once you have forced the foam into the larger spaces in behind the trim, you need to lock it in place by caulking in the exposed holes.  I recommend that you wait a minimum of 3 hours to allow the expansion foam to dry.  Use a sharp knife to cut off any excess that is exposed after three hours.  Open your caulking gun tip to the maximum size it allows.  Make sure your putty knife is close by and be sure to have a rag or two around to clean up.  Caulk all around any openings under the trim and use some excessive caulking.  Flatten out the caulking with the putty knife to seal up all the holes you find.

Once you have done the above steps, wait until the next day and replace your trim. 

You will have now stopped the air flow from around your window trim.  On older windows, providing you are not intending on opening the window for now, I suggest that you install a window seal kit to stop any draft through the pains.  In fact, if you install a window seal kit on both the inside and the outside (if possible) you will do a much better job of saving on your heating and cooling costs.

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