My house is drafty when the cold wind of winter begins blowing here in Philadelphia, starting in November. These drafts cause us to turn up the heat, use more hot water, and overall endure higher energy costs as we use more natural gas to power our heating appliances. What if I told you that in addition to optimizing your thermostat and fixing cold spots, there’s a phone accessory that you can buy that uses infrared to “see” temperature and that lets you walk around your house and find every air leak, so that you can take steps to seal out cold air? Using this method, I was able to drastically reduce the feeling of my house being drafty, and as a result, I’ve been able to turn down my thermostat and use less heat.
Get a thermal camera to “see” the cold air
Fixing air leaks can save you hundreds
This is the Seek thermal camera. It’s available for both iPhone and Android and uses a free app to let you “see” the temperature around your house. Using it is simple: through the viewfinder in the Seek app, warmer colors like red, orange, and yellow indicate warmth, then cooler colors like green and especially blue indicate cold. Pointing the thermal camera at windows and doors lets you “see” where the cold air is coming in just by taking note of the colors in the viewfinder. You can even take infrared photos in the Seek app, which is handy for comparing air leaks before and after you seal them. Taking photos will save them to your camera roll and photo library, making it easy to retrieve them later.
A simple fix
It’s all about adjusting the threshold under the door
If you open most exterior doors in your house, you’ll notice this adjustable wooden strip that is called the Threshold or Door Bottom Seal. Using a simple flathead screwdriver, this piece can be lowered and raised to come into tighter contact with the bottom of your door in order to seal out external air. I found turning these screws just a quarter or half turn was enough to raise the seal enough to cut out most of the draft. If you raise it too much, the door will become difficult to close, but that’s easily fixed with additional fine-tuning.
Walking around my house, I noticed that the greatest source of air leaks was coming from the threshold, and by just loosening the screws (lefty-loosy) and bringing the sweep higher, I was able to seal out the majority of the outside air. You can see in the above picture that the bottom of my deck door is showing a lot of blue, which is cold air.
Another source of air leak was these light switches near my porch.
To fix this, I bought a foam gasket from Home Depot that you simply install by removing the switch plate and resting the foam piece in front of the switches. This fix will cost less than $2 and will stop drafts coming from light switches on exterior walls. Just be safe and turn off the electricity to the switch in question first.
Is it worth it?
If your house has a lot of doors and windows, then yes
It’s difficult to quantify how much I’m saving once I tightened up all of my door thresholds, installed foam gaskets around certain light switches, and applied spray foam in key areas. In fact, there are several inexpensive things you can do to help reduce drafts when you find them after using a thermal camera: spray foam, caulk, weatherstripping, rope caulk, and foam gaskets. If you go to your local Lowe’s or Home Depot, they have entire sections dedicated to energy efficiency where you can find products to tighten up any areas where your thermal camera detects air leaks. I also found it very helpful to search YouTube for “how to fix air leaks.”
A cheaper alternative to Seek
The FLIR thermal camera does the same thing but is almost $100 cheaper
- Recharge Hours
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N/A – powered by phone
- Brand
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Flir
The FLIR One Pro Android Thermal Imaging Camera is a portable USB-C thermal imaging camera that turns your smartphone into an infrared inspection tool. It plugs into Android or USB-C-equipped iPhones, showing heat differences and capturing thermal images/video via the FLIR app. Ideal for home, electrical or mechanical diagnostics with clear temperature-based visuals.
If you don’t want to spend $249 for the Seek Thermal camera, there’s a less expensive alternative that does the same thing. The FLIR thermal camera is $159-214, depending on current sales. It, too, works with iPhone and Android and can help you find air leaks. The main downside of the FLIR camera compared to Seek is resolution: the FLIR camera shows only a 160×120-pixel window, while the Seek shows twice that. Frankly, the resolution doesn’t matter since you’ll only be using the thermal camera for short bursts.
