In tight pursuit of energy losses

An intact build­ing envel­ope obvi­ously makes a sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tion to the feel­ing of com­fort in one’s own four walls. In real life, how­ever, win­dow and door seals are often in poor con­di­tion. The res­ult: sig­ni­fic­ant energy losses and increased noise dis­turb­ance. When elim­in­at­ing the gaps, homeown­ers should take care to use products that are not harm­ful to health.

My home, my castle? If you look at the gen­er­al con­di­tion of houses, this is only par­tially true in many cases. Wheth­er win­dows or doors – there are glar­ing gaps in many parts of the domest­ic fort­ress. With unpleas­ant con­sequences for all res­id­ents. There are drafts every­where and it does­n’t get really warm in winter, while the rooms heat up con­sid­er­ably in sum­mer. In addi­tion, res­id­ents suf­fer all year round from out­side noise enter­ing the house.

The con­sequences of a leaky build­ing are severe. In view of the high energy prices, many homeown­ers and ten­ants are wor­ried about the next heat­ing bill. And the stress factor noise can lead to ser­i­ous health prob­lems. In its cur­rent “Envir­on­ment­al Noise Guidelines for the European Region”, the World Health Organ­iz­a­tion (WHO) lists – among oth­er things – sleep dis­orders, car­di­ovas­cu­lar dis­eases and even pren­at­al dam­age and mis­car­riages as pos­sible effects of noise-induced stress.

If you have the feel­ing that there are a lot of leaks in and around the house, you should take action. The best way is to hire a pro­fes­sion­al, for example a win­dow fit­ter, build­ing expert or energy con­sult­ant, to ana­lyze the cur­rent situ­ation. Based on their res­ults, a roadmap for the imple­ment­a­tion of mod­ern­iz­a­tion meas­ures can be drawn up. The good news for homeown­ers and ten­ants is that it is not always neces­sary to insu­late the whole build­ing envel­ope or to com­pletely replace all win­dows in order to improve the energy effi­ciency and achieve bet­ter noise pro­tec­tion.

 The prop­er seal­ing of win­dows and doors is a highly effect­ive and much less expens­ive meas­ure. If you want to do it your­self, you can simply apply self-adhes­ive rub­ber seal­ing strips along the frames and sash edges. It is, how­ever, much more effect­ive to hire a pro­fes­sion­al to do the work. Over time, not only the extern­al seal­ing between win­dow frame and masonry becomes brittle and per­meable, but also the insu­la­tion between win­dow pane and frame. Elim­in­at­ing these defects requires a great deal of spe­cial­ist know-how. A win­dow fit­ter can also check to what extent exist­ing roller shut­ter boxes need to be insu­lated. Fur­ther­more, it may also make sense to insu­late parts of the build­ing envel­ope such as the win­dow reveals.