How To Detect And Prevent Air Leaks In Your Home

by

Roberto Bell

If your house has air leaks, your electric or gas bill is going to reflect it pretty quickly. So how do you detect whether you have air leaks in your home and what do you do to prevent them?

A heated house is much like a chimney in that they both hold warm air and are surrounded by cold air. In this, a house will draw air in at the bottom and expel it at the top. All winter, a heated house is trying to push air through the top-floor ceiling into the attic. But when looking for air leaks, in addition to looking in the attic, you want to examine your whole house. Air can leave the house at any point, seeping out your precious warm air and letting in cool air.So what is the rule of thumb when looking for air leaks? To start, look any place that you may have what is called penetrations or discontinuities. Discontinuities could be where different materials meet, such as between brick and wood siding, between foundation and walls, and between the chimney and siding. Penetrations are places in your home where holes have been drilled for exhaust fans, ducts, chimneys etc. Look for small holes such as those created for electrical wiring and cable installations as well.Also look for bypasses, which are major air passages from any floor into the attic. Dropped ceilings in the room below will often conceal a direct connection to the attic. Concrete-block party walls between row houses also often move house air into the attic.To look for air leaks in the attic, go up in your attic at night and see if you can see any light shining through from the floor below. If your home is older, the most thorough way to prevent air leaks in an attic floor is to seal all areas where pipes, ducts, or wiring pass through the floor. Leaks can be sealed with caulking, expanding foam, plastic, or other methods.Another common area to examine for air leaks is around windows and doors. Starting with your windows, use a waterproof caulk and a caulking gun or simple weather stripping to seal any air leaks you may detect around a window’s frame or sill. Replace older windows with ones that offer greater protection from air leaks. Windows marked with the government’s Energy Star designation are ideal for insulating your home. The durable materials used in Energy Star window frames provide greater protection against air leaks.As for your doors, seal drafts that occur around exterior doors. Exterior doors contribute greatly to the problem of air leaks. To help stop drafts you can install a doorsill, weather stripping or a door sweep. Weather stripping or foam insulation strips can be purchased at your local hardware store and is available in varying thicknesses. Choose the thickness based on factors such as how tightly your door closes. If you can look at your door during the day and see light, you may want to use a thicker strip. If your door closes tightly, choose a thinner strip. You can place the strip on the areas where you feel heat loss. Typically on a door, placing the foam insulation strip along the inside of the door jam makes for a neater appearance and less people tend to notice it.Some of the less obvious places to check for air leaks is electrical outlets and light switches. Sometimes you can place your hand over these areas and see if you can feel a breeze. It is more common to have an air leak at the exterior walls, but depending on how your home was built you may have air leaks at the interior walls as well. Electrical outlet and light switch insulators are a great place air likes to come in. Check these as well.Next, if your home has plumbing coming in directly from under the house, these areas can be left unsealed. Look under the sink for any holes around the plumbing pipes. Foam insulation can be placed around the pipe to seal small gaps. For larger gaps consider stuffing the holes with steel wool and taping over it with duct tape. This will not only seal the air leak but also prevent mice and rats from chewing through to the inside of your home. If your plumbing pipe has a cap around it, pull the cap away from the wall. If there is a hole, simply use the foam insulation strip to fill in the hole by wrapping a small strip around the pipe.If you cannot seem to figure out where your house is leaking air, an infrared scan can be used. A professional can examine your house with this heat-sensitive camera and then be able to provide you with where there is at least 10 C difference in temperature between inside and outside air.If you are on a tight budget, consider closing off rooms that you do not commonly use. Close off air vents in the room and keep the door to that room closed. Place a towel at the bottom of the outside of the door to prevent the cold air from getting to the rest of the house. This works really well and helps to save money on the heating and air bills.When you seal up your home, you will notice pretty quickly a difference in your energy bill and possibly find yourself a lot more comfortable during the harsh winter and summer months.

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How To Detect And Prevent Air Leaks In Your Home}

Building a dedicated mobile app is not an option anymore. It has become a necessity, rather a priority for businesses. However, it is often difficult to decide whether to go for native mobile app development or choose cross-platform development. This decision depends on various factors like budget, time limit, performance and many more. However, in this article, we will be stressing upon the reasons and the benefits of developing native apps. Before that, let us get a brief glimpse of a native mobile app development approach.

What is Native Mobile App Development?In the native approach, the code is written and the app is developed only for a specific operating system like iOS or Android. The end users can access the apps from dedicated stores like Google Play or the App Store. Such apps can use the device-specific hardware like camera, GPS, microphone, etc. Native apps do not require any external help from other browsers or tools for their launching. Their data is stored in a cloud service or in the memory of the gadget.

For native iOS app development, the developers use programming languages like Swift or Objective-C. On the other hand, native Android app development requires programming in languages like Java or Kotlin.

Benefits of creating Native Mobile Apps

Secure and ReliableNative apps are known for their reliability and security. These apps make use of the core languages while programming for any specific platform which provide better protection against security violations. Also, it is easier to evaluate risks in native apps. These apps offer proactive performance and security upgrades. Using multi-factor authentication is easier in these apps, which adds to its security. The native app development companies can have an embedded certification for averting a man-in-the-middle attack. They also offer remote management controls on individual devices which have the ability to even wipe out the app and its data remotely, if required.

More Intuitive and InteractiveNative apps run smoothly when it comes to user input and output. These apps can also inherit the OS interfaces and look like they are an integrated part of the device itself. Native apps are quite interactive and intuitive in nature as they are developed for a particular operating system. They stick to the guidelines of the OS while development. So, the apps have specific UI standards of the OS and the users can feel a natural flow while using the app. They can interact with the apps and grasp the concepts easily. This allows learning the apps quickly and performing various actions swiftly.

Optimum PerformanceNative mobile apps have a powerful and fast performance and have a great operational efficiency. As they are programmed using the core programming languages and APIs for any platform, they are highly proficient and have the ability to use the features of that platform to the fullest. These platform-specific apps utilize the processing speed of the device to its maximum potential. Also, the load times of these apps are lower, ensuring a top-notch performance.

Better Mobile Hardware IntegrationAs discussed earlier, native apps take full advantage of the hardware features of the device (like GPS, microphone, camera, etc.) and the operating system. They have better mobile hardware integration and so, are faster in the execution of the processes. Another advantage of native apps is push notifications.

Better UI/UX ExperienceThe native apps are the best when it comes to user experience. They access the hardware features of devices for better performance aspects. These apps maintain aspect ratio for ensuring good quality of the visuals. They have a better control over size, orientation and resolution. These apps provide a seamless experience to users, resulting in higher customer satisfaction.

Key Takeaways:It is clear looking at the above advantages that native mobile app development is a highly preferred choice as compared to other approaches. Cross-platform apps offer flexibility in the UI design, however, they lack in providing responsive and fast UX. Native apps are great and reward brilliantly in the long run. No wonder, mobile app development companies continue to get an increasing demand for native apps in the market.

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