Bubble Wrap
That's right you heard me, bubble wrap.
The Daily Friz
During the summer my kitchen was starting the renovation process and we had to replace an outside facing wall due to some water damage. The job was not really that huge of an undertaking as it would seem. Construction talk aside, we had discovered a lack of insulation in our 100 year old house. Turns out all that separated our kitchen from the elements was some plyboard and balled up newspaper from the 1960's. You read that correctly, old newspaper stuffed in the walls to insulate us from the outdoors. The revelation that the coming winter would be a little on the chilly side had me thinking of cheap ways to cut heating cost until proper weatherization could be done the following year.
Now you probably clicked on this to read about how simple, cheap, or often free bubble wrap could save you a few bucks in the winter and I promise not to disappoint. You see insulation, whether to keep cold out or hot in, works by lowering the transferable mass between objects. Heat transfers by 3 types: radiation, conduction, and convection. For the purpose of this article we'll focus on conduction, as it pertains more to the topic of insulation.
Conduction transfers heat through material. Heat excites the molecules of an object and in turn the molecules of anything touching the first heated material also become warmed. This is good news if you have a heated back massager but when the transference of heat acts on a loss from the primary source, its bad news for your windows and walls. The denser the material the more heat leaching molecules are there to steal your valuable heat. That's why most proper insulation is comprised of light, less dense material, which conducts heat poorly.
Enough of the boring stuff, on to the bubble wrap. Windows are one of the biggest drains on your heating bill. Aside from spending a few hundred dollars on new windows, a cheap temporary solution is to use some bubble wrap. Since the glass in your window is a thin dense material, it could use some extra insulation to help keep your heat in. Grab some bubble wrap, a cheap roll at the packaging isle of your local everything store or the left overs from an old online purchase will do.
Just like putting on some window tint, use a spray bottle with some soapy water in it and give your windows a quick spritz. Before it dries, press the flat side of the bubble wrap to your window and cut to size. This works as insulation by in creasing the distance the heat needs to travel to escape your house through the plastic and the gas in the bubbles, while still giving you some sunlight during the day. If you are the creative type you can play around with it to make patterns and colors that will reflect well in your rooms or make a design that goes well with the curtains.
To complete insulating those old windows fold some bubble wrap over top itself and close the window under it, sealing any tiny gaps while giving you a delightful "pop" (this acts as cheap weather stripping). Stuff some around the barely used attic and cellar doors if you want. Pretty much any cold drafty crack you can squeeze it in will help insulate your home in a pinch.
Other ideas to consider: feel around your outlets and light switches. Sometimes poorly insulated walls allow for outside air to be pushed through these things. If you feel cold air shooting out any outlets, cut of a piece of duct tape the length of the outlet and place it over both plugs. The ends of a power cord should just poke safely through the tape while keeping the draft inside the wall until you can buy yourself a can of expanding foam insulation to seal it properly.
Tags: Bubble Warp, Insulation, Cheap, DYI, Do It Yourself, Heating, Cooling, Drafty, Windows, Window, Winter, Weather, Weatherization, Frizbeen, The Daily Friz
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