Did you know that a draft can be observed even in a closed room, which is isolated from the surrounding space? Such air currents appear seemingly out of nowhere, making us worry about our health. Then the first thing a person does is examine the windows, looking for possible cracks everywhere. Having not found anything, we wonder in surprise, where is it blowing from, if everything seems to be hermetically sealed?
How to find a draft
To prevent diseases in your family, you should start looking for a draft in the house, namely, find out where it came from. The most popular methods to help detect unpleasant coolness in a home are.
- A stream of white smoke, which appears as a result of an ignited paper “pound”, will indicate cracks in windows and door jambs. You should bring a saucer with lit paper to them and watch where the smoke rushes. This is where the hole is located.
- The same actions can be performed with a match or candle; its flame always deviates along the “course” of the air flow.
- You can also carry out the experiment with a stream of smoke a little differently. Take an ashtray, place a scented oriental stick, which emits smoke. The vessel is placed on a stool located in the center of the room, from which you should move about one step and then look in which direction the column of smoke goes. And then in this direction you need to look for a draft.
- Take a plastic bag and make fringe from it. This method helps to find cracks in the window and around the door perimeter. So, the resulting strips (which should be about 10 cm) should be attached to the structure. If there are flaws, the fringe moves back even with a small air flow. But the method has a disadvantage. The fact is that due to the ability to electrify, the material of the package can stick to the surface being studied. Then you can use eco-film, which is made from plant materials; it is less electrified. Bags using this material can be purchased in supermarkets; they have the appropriate inscription.
- The use of a thermal imager. This method is the most expensive, but shows greater efficiency. Sophisticated equipment reacts almost instantly to heat leakage and will show thermal radiation indicators on the monitor.
How to prevent blowing from plastic windows?
A new seal must be installed around the entire perimeter of the frame and sash, carefully wrapping it around the corners. The ends of the sealing tape should meet at the top of the perimeter, and for maximum tightness it is better to glue them together. Now the windows will not fog up, let in cold air and extraneous noise.
Interesting materials:
What do you need to connect wi-fi at home? What is a network drive and how to connect it? Displayport how to connect a monitor? How to connect Dualshock 4 to iPhone? How to connect a second one to one router? How can I connect a portable speaker? How to connect regular speakers to a computer? How to connect 2 Dualshock 4 to PC? How to connect joystick 2 to PlayStation 3? How to connect 2 Move controllers?
Consequences of a draft
You should not be dismissive of the appearance of a draft in the apartment, ignoring it and not even trying to find out where it is blowing from. Doctors say that the local action of air masses cooling certain parts of the human body in an apartment can have the most disastrous consequences. You, of course, have more than once heard from your friends and relatives who have a cold the colloquial “blow”, behind which a whole bunch of diseases can be hidden. Depending on what exactly gets in the way of the cold wind (face, ear, neck or back), the matter may end in neuritis of the facial nerve, otitis media or severe myositis.
Therefore, you must definitely check where the draft is coming from in the apartment, and the sooner you start this check, the better.
Another reason to remove a cold source from your home is financial - remove the draft and your energy company bills will magically go down. This also includes additional costs for preserving, for example, antiques, which are very demanding in terms of temperature and humidity. Losses under the item “repairs” are also possible (wallpaper coming off the walls due to a draft, cracks in fresh plaster, etc.).
About ventilation
Staying indoors for a long time without access to fresh air negatively affects a person’s well-being.
And it’s not a lack of oxygen – quite the opposite. The fact is that a large amount of substances is released into the air through human breathing and from the skin, primarily carbon dioxide. When its concentration increases, fatigue and headache appear. Without access to fresh air, symptoms will only get worse. This is why room ventilation is so important. It is necessary to carry it out all year round 2-3 times a day. In the morning, this will help renew the air that has become stagnant during the night, and in the evening, it will help you sleep better. But this needs to be done differently depending on the time of year and weather. In winter, it is better to carry out intensive short ventilation. After leaving the room, you need to open the window and close the door for 3-4 minutes. This method will not work if there are plants on the windowsill that are sensitive to low temperatures, in which case they will get sick and may die. Well, for a long time, an open window provides a relatively small flow of air, but it cools the room much more. In addition, this style of ventilation can provoke phenomena such as drafts. And then the desire for health can turn into unpleasant diseases.
How to get rid of drafts
If you live in a private house, then there are probably a lot of utility rooms. Insulate the attic and basement passages, and also inspect other doors connecting the living area with the utility room or terrace for their tightness. Do not ignore the places where any pipelines enter the walls, from where there can also be a lot of leakage.
Important! An uninsulated entrance area can be the main cause of drafts in your home. To insulate the door leaf, various insulation materials are used, and the lower part of the structure is equipped with a special rubber tire or brush seal for sealing purposes.
Residents of apartments need:
- check all window openings and door structures for cracks using the above methods;
- if possible, remove the “window” air conditioner for the winter or securely seal all the seams along its perimeter;
- examine the mounting locations of ceiling lights and electrical outlets. Surprisingly, a significant portion of heat loss in apartments occurs through these devices.
To fix the problem, you will need to purchase mounting foam, window sealant, putty and a sealant suitable for the type of room at a hardware store. With just a few hours spent, that annoying draft will never seep into your home again.
Reasons why it is cold in a corner apartment
The main reason for freezing of the owners of a corner apartment is poor-quality heating. If the radiators in the house are barely warm, then contact the housing office or the company that provides heating services in the house for clarification of the situation. After contacting the appropriate authority, you should be visited by a specialist who should check that there is no air in the system, and also make sure that the pressure in the batteries is normal. In both the first and second cases, the emergency team must independently eliminate the cause of the cold. The technician may suggest replacing the old battery with a modern one that will heat the room well. According to the law, the installation of a new radiator can occur even at the height of the heating season, since the heating is turned off by the riser and only for a couple of hours.
Cold air coming from outside
The second most popular reason is the intake of cold air from outside. Make sure that the apartment does not have any cracks or unsealed joints. If you have wooden windows, then they must be insulated with special insulation.
Without waterproofing there will be no thermal insulation
Any insulation under the influence of moisture and winds becomes unusable ahead of schedule. Therefore, when building a house, it is important to waterproof it. Below are some waterproofing tips:
- Between the plinth and the frame wall it is necessary to lay hydrosol, roofing felt or bicroelast.
- If the base is thicker than the walls, then you need to make a drain through which the moisture will escape.
- To prevent the insulation from becoming damp, an air gap must be made in the structure, the thickness of which should be at least half a meter.
- On the side of the insulation that faces the street, it is necessary to make a vapor barrier.
- Holes with an area of 75 sq.cm must be made in the walls, top and bottom. (one hole per 20 m2 of wall). They are called vents and are needed to ensure that air circulates in the air gap.
Tools and materials
In order to fix the problem it may be useful:
- stationery knife;
- glazing bead;
- dye;
- sealant or its analogues;
- polyurethane foam;
- building level;
- plaster;
- foam canister gun;
- small nails;
- plane;
- construction hair dryer;
- chisel;
- sandpaper;
- thermal imager;
- glue (PVA or construction);
- seal (D-, P-shaped or foam rubber);
- paper.
Prevention measures
First of all, you need to pay attention to the thermal insulation of the room if we are talking about a house. If possible, get rid of old, cracked wooden windows with cracks and install new double-glazed windows. If any problems still arise, there are special covers on the window sill that protect against air currents. Similar ones exist for doors if they do not close tightly.
Next, you can change the flooring to carpet or something similar. This will additionally insulate the room and also eliminate cracks under the door. And although caring for such a coating is more labor-intensive, your health is worth it.
You should also pay attention to the air conditioning, if there is one. It should be located so that the air flow from it is not directed towards people. The ideal location is in the hallway or corridor, where no one is constantly present.
Another point is choosing the right clothes. Where it is not possible to change the location of the table, for example, standing in a draft, you need to insulate it. It is worth paying attention to the most vulnerable parts of the body – legs and feet. Their hypothermia is fraught with colds, sinusitis and even toothache. In second place, especially for women, is the lower back. It is also worth taking care of your neck, shoulders and ears; their hypothermia also leads to unpleasant consequences. And, of course, it makes sense to pay attention to your immunity - carry out vitamin therapy and hardening.
Finally, the golden rule: if the window is open, the door must be closed. And vice versa.
When does it occur?
According to the laws of physics, the air moves faster the narrower the space it is in. When passing through an open window into a room, its speed increases. And the narrower the gap, the faster it will move - usually it reaches its greatest intensity right above the floor and a little higher. If the windows are closed, but do not fit well to the frame, there will still be air blowing into these gaps. And this may be exacerbated by several other factors. Therefore, the first rule of ventilation is to open a window rather than a window. In the first case, the air will be renewed faster with a smaller decrease in room temperature. And the second, in accordance with the presence of other factors, is the following: if the window is open, the door must be closed. This rule also applies vice versa. This is especially important if the window is opposite the door. If they are open at the same time, and a person remains in the path of the flow for a long time, most likely, he will subsequently become ill. By the way, the same effect can be obtained while sitting under the air conditioner. In any case, it is not surprising that in many countries, even warm ones, they are so careful about drafts.
Difficulties and errors
Difficulties in eliminating blowing can arise in the absence of experience or with very old windows. If you do not have the appropriate skills in eliminating cracks, then this is not a problem, since you can learn such minor repairs in the process of sealing the vent. But most often the appearance of the window will suffer from inept actions.
If the window is very old, then the wood on it may be dry and fall off . This leads to the gaps increasing to large sizes. In such a situation, the seal may simply not cope with its task.
Attention! One of the main mistakes when eliminating drafts in wooden windows is haste. If you do everything quickly or not carefully, the gap may appear again, since the seal has come off and the sealant has not received sufficient adhesion.
also carefully select the material for sealing the blowout . For example, the seal can have different sizes and if it is too thick, the doors will not close.
Determination of wind respiration of microdrafts with light stripes
This method of finding the source of a draft is good when it is windy outside. And in general, when the heat blows out strongly in windy weather.
The point here is this. Gusts of wind and whirlwinds do not necessarily just fly into and out of a room. The wind may not penetrate into the room “right through and even further” (about the projectile). Local pressure differences (wind!) force air to breathe back and forth in pores, wholes, volumes (between frames, doors), and in open-cell insulation. So there is an increased heat exchange between room air and the surrounding cold environment.
Winter mode
But it can “blow” not only from wooden window frames: not everyone knows that modern double-glazed windows have two modes: winter and summer, which differ in the degree to which the window sash is pressed, and if they are not moved to the appropriate position, a cold wind will blow into the apartment. To switch windows to winter mode, you need to use a special key, screwdriver or hexagon (depending on the type of window) to turn the eccentrics that are located on the end side of the sash. The procedure for this procedure should be described in the instructions for double-glazed windows, and if you are not confident in your abilities, it is better to entrust the transition of windows to winter mode to the specialists of the company that installed them.
What to do if it’s still “breathing somewhere” and it’s cold?
Insulate the room.
It is optimal to cover the walls with plasterboard with a layer of insulation, for example, polystyrene foam or mineral wool, and install heated floors.
Order a thermal imaging survey.
Specialists will come to the site, find places, including non-obvious ones, through which heat escapes and drafts appear, and advise what can be done.
If the apartment is new and was rented out during the warm season, and drafts are discovered with the onset of cold weather, the conclusion of thermal imaging cameras will help to record the “jambs” of the developer and present a justified claim to him.
On the cover: design project by Anastasia Stenberg
