How to Rid Your House of an Unwanted Chill!

This is one that a lot of people don't think about. The bottoms of your walls where the trim molding is located can be quite problematic if the caulk seal is broken. This seal gets broken for a lot of reasons, such as re-painting, replacing carpeting with hardwood floors, etc. What happens is that air creeps in through the bottom framing of your home and seeps in around the moldings. Most often there is a gap where the drywall meets the floor, which is exactly what the molding is used to cover. However if it is not properly caulked, this can be a source of small air leaks around the entire home, creating quite a chill and loss of heat.

The fix is as simple as buying a couple tubes of caulk and running a bead down the tops and bottoms of the molding if you have hard floors. If you have carpeting, the dense fibers of the carpet should actually serve as a barrier to the draft along the bottom portion of the molding (unless poorly installed), so you will just need to concentrate on sealing the upper portion of the molding. Once again take a damp sponge and run it down the length of the bead in order to give it a smooth professional look.

Also check the trim molding around your door frame to make sure there are no cracks in the caulk. If in doubt, run a bead around the door trim anyway to ensure cold air can't find its way in through here. You might be surprised how often the little important details such as this are left out by your typical builders.

Read the next page "An uninsulated and non-weatherstripped crawl space."