How to keep drafts and cold outside

Have you ever exper­i­enced the wind whist­ling through joints and cracks around your win­dows? Then you’ll know it’s not only unpleas­ant but also causes heat­ing costs to rise sig­ni­fic­antly. Before the start of the cold sea­son, you should there­fore check all win­dows in your home for tight­ness. Smal­ler leaks can be repaired by your­self without being a qual­i­fied crafts­man. Seal­ing tapes or sil­ic­one foams are avail­able for this pur­pose. But for lar­ger cav­it­ies, for example under the win­dowsill, you should call in a win­dow expert. To ensure a healthy liv­ing envir­on­ment, only very low-emis­­sion seal­ing products should be used. You can recog­nize them by the EMICODE® seal on the label.

Many have already exper­i­enced it: You sit in a heated room and still shiver with cold. Yet unpleas­ant drafts can often be stopped by simple means. This is also good for your wal­let. The non-profit con­sult­ing com­pany co2online has cal­cu­lated that a single-fam­ily home of 110 m² can save more than 900 kWh and 70 euros per year (about 7 euros per win­dow) if the win­dows are sub­sequently sealed. But the res­ult is not only a pleas­ant room cli­mate: also the CO₂ foot­print is reduced. With gas heat­ing, this amounts to an aver­age of 230 kg of CO₂ per year. If you want to use envir­on­ment­ally friendly seal­ing products that ensure a healthy home, simply look out for the EMICODE cer­ti­fic­a­tion on the pack­aging.

Home own­ers and res­id­ents can veri­fy wheth­er there’s a draft prob­lem by com­par­ing their heat­ing energy con­sump­tion with that of sim­il­ar house­holds. With the help of a tea light or candle, they can eas­ily check where exactly the drafts enter the room. Altern­at­ively, they can take a piece of paper, wedge it between win­dow and frame, and close the win­dow. If the paper is now very dif­fi­cult to pull out, the win­dow is tight.

Here now an over­view of the most com­mon seal­ing meas­ures. Joints and cracks between win­dow frame and sash can be effect­ively closed with self-adhes­ive seal­ing tapes. With a little skill, even a layper­son can do this. How­ever, the tapes will keep your win­dows tight for no more than one winter. Gun-applied sil­ic­one seal­ants, on the oth­er hand, provide a per­fect seal for many years – espe­cially in the area of con­nec­tion joints between wall and win­dow. They also pro­tect against mois­ture.