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For anything I may have contributed, you're most welcome. Usually some of us here are upbraided as a bunch of arrogant, condescending, SOB engineers & all round pricks whose sole goal in life is to feed our egos, apparently by making the great unwashed masses feel inadequate by not telling them how great they are, and by failing to give them the prize they so obviously deserve for the supreme sacrifice on their part of simply showing up, with all that being what really separates this place from the other forums, which other forums apparently don't piss people off as much.
Anyway, welcome to the neighborhood. I guess opinions do vary. Enough rant. Back to business.
Often, and particularly with older housing stock, very roughly somewhere between 30 - 50 % of a home's heating/cooling load is due to air infiltration. Leaks around places like doors, windows and lots of other places, generally where two surfaces meet (or actually don't quite meet). Other places are electrical receptacles in walls and ceiling light fixtures, vent vans with inadequate dampers, and a big, but usually ignored leak path around the sill plate. There are lots more, and lots of tricks for snooping leaks - things like smoke pencils, and even saran wrap fluttering or moving in a very slight draft, etc.
I have a book, long since out of print called "Home Remedies", ISBN # 0-9601884-0-1 published by the Mid Atlantic Solar Energy Association, 1981. It's a layperson's guide to energy retrofits for an existing home. ~ 250 pages and full of stuff that works, and equally importantly, a lot of reasons why those things work. A lot on insulation and reducing infiltration and lots more goodies your mother never told you. Semi technical but in a folksy way. Perhaps your library has a copy. Obviously outdated, but with a 40 year old house and heat still flowing from where it's hot to where it's cold, there's a lot that's useful. At least one place to start. I'm sure there are other tomes as well. My bookshelf has quite a few, but I've not collected as many since moving from Buffalo to San Diego.
If you really want an eye opener, have the energy audit folks do a blower door test on your house, both before and after it gets tightened up.. See the net for details about the test.
Your windows are probably OK - it's the frames/sliders and gaps between frame and house where most infiltration/exfiltration troubles reside. BTW: As you tighten things up, try to make the inside surface of an exterior wall tighter than the outside surface. Reason: Provided the outside of a wall is tight enough to keep rainwater, bugs, dust etc. out, making and keeping the inside surface tighter will keep the wall interior space of the wall between the inside and outside dryer by allowing what's probably dryer outside air into the space before the inside are gets there and has a chance to cool and condense the contained water vapor and cause damage. If you live in a VERY moist climate LA bayou, FL swamps, etc., reverse things and tighten the outside more, but that's somewhat uncommon. Check around to knowledgeable (not Larry with a ladder types) folks for local wisdom and common practice in such matters. The energy audit folks are probably such a good source of info. There are some climate locations where that may be less true, but if you have a significant heating season, tighten the inside and keep vapor barriers on the warm side of any insulation.
To my knowledge, windows that old did not have insulation inside them. Insulating the interior of window frames is not all that efficient. Not conducting frame materials like wood and vinyl or fiberglass with thermal breaks usually do the trick.
The inert gas in windows is, IMO a rip off. In spite of what you may read, the argon or other stuff in the space has only a bit less thermal conductivity than nitrogen or oxygen (air), and after a few years may well leak out/exchanges with outside air anyway. IR surface coatings can be of some value and may be mandated by your state. I doubt you have such coatings on 20 yr. old windows. Overall, caulking/tightening/up windows will get you about halfway to the same thermal benefits as new windows for a LOT less $$. So much so that on the list of the most bang for the buck home improvements, new windows are usually one of the two least cost effective measures a homeowner can take to reduce an HVAC bill. The other is solar PV.
On clothes dryers: Don't screw around with venting the outlet inside a dwelling, or drawing air from far away places. First and foremost, inside venting can be dangerous, particularly venting (or not venting actually) a gas fired dryer inside a dwelling.it's also a PITA (pain in the ass), getting lint all over the place. About the only thing I've ever done is isolate the laundry room from the house with a door to the rest of the dwelling and open a 2d door in the laundry room to the outside. Ducting suction from the atttic is no more than a super efficient, uncontrolled and uncontrollable infiltration leak in/out of the dwelling when the dryer is not running.
My apologies on the solar clothes dryer comment. That's a bit of an inside joke. A solar clothes dryer is also known as a clothes line. Extremely cost effective with some psychologically therapeutic value.
Overalll, if widows and solar PV are the two least cost effective measures to lower a home's energy bill, and therefore and also very $$ intensive (expensive), the cost of materials to tighten up leaks is one of the least costly and tightening up a home/closing gaps is almost the most cost effective thing you can do. Short of simply turning stuff off, it's close to the top in terms of cost effectiveness. The sweat equity required is a bit high, made more so by the fact that in the caulking and insulation business attention to detail is paramount and (particularly with caulking) cleanliness IS next to Godliness. But, to the good side, none of that expense needs to come at one time.
Knowledge is power. Get more of the first and the second will follow.
Take what you want of the above. Scrap the rest.
Anyway, welcome to the neighborhood. I guess opinions do vary. Enough rant. Back to business.
Often, and particularly with older housing stock, very roughly somewhere between 30 - 50 % of a home's heating/cooling load is due to air infiltration. Leaks around places like doors, windows and lots of other places, generally where two surfaces meet (or actually don't quite meet). Other places are electrical receptacles in walls and ceiling light fixtures, vent vans with inadequate dampers, and a big, but usually ignored leak path around the sill plate. There are lots more, and lots of tricks for snooping leaks - things like smoke pencils, and even saran wrap fluttering or moving in a very slight draft, etc.
I have a book, long since out of print called "Home Remedies", ISBN # 0-9601884-0-1 published by the Mid Atlantic Solar Energy Association, 1981. It's a layperson's guide to energy retrofits for an existing home. ~ 250 pages and full of stuff that works, and equally importantly, a lot of reasons why those things work. A lot on insulation and reducing infiltration and lots more goodies your mother never told you. Semi technical but in a folksy way. Perhaps your library has a copy. Obviously outdated, but with a 40 year old house and heat still flowing from where it's hot to where it's cold, there's a lot that's useful. At least one place to start. I'm sure there are other tomes as well. My bookshelf has quite a few, but I've not collected as many since moving from Buffalo to San Diego.
If you really want an eye opener, have the energy audit folks do a blower door test on your house, both before and after it gets tightened up.. See the net for details about the test.
Your windows are probably OK - it's the frames/sliders and gaps between frame and house where most infiltration/exfiltration troubles reside. BTW: As you tighten things up, try to make the inside surface of an exterior wall tighter than the outside surface. Reason: Provided the outside of a wall is tight enough to keep rainwater, bugs, dust etc. out, making and keeping the inside surface tighter will keep the wall interior space of the wall between the inside and outside dryer by allowing what's probably dryer outside air into the space before the inside are gets there and has a chance to cool and condense the contained water vapor and cause damage. If you live in a VERY moist climate LA bayou, FL swamps, etc., reverse things and tighten the outside more, but that's somewhat uncommon. Check around to knowledgeable (not Larry with a ladder types) folks for local wisdom and common practice in such matters. The energy audit folks are probably such a good source of info. There are some climate locations where that may be less true, but if you have a significant heating season, tighten the inside and keep vapor barriers on the warm side of any insulation.
To my knowledge, windows that old did not have insulation inside them. Insulating the interior of window frames is not all that efficient. Not conducting frame materials like wood and vinyl or fiberglass with thermal breaks usually do the trick.
The inert gas in windows is, IMO a rip off. In spite of what you may read, the argon or other stuff in the space has only a bit less thermal conductivity than nitrogen or oxygen (air), and after a few years may well leak out/exchanges with outside air anyway. IR surface coatings can be of some value and may be mandated by your state. I doubt you have such coatings on 20 yr. old windows. Overall, caulking/tightening/up windows will get you about halfway to the same thermal benefits as new windows for a LOT less $$. So much so that on the list of the most bang for the buck home improvements, new windows are usually one of the two least cost effective measures a homeowner can take to reduce an HVAC bill. The other is solar PV.
On clothes dryers: Don't screw around with venting the outlet inside a dwelling, or drawing air from far away places. First and foremost, inside venting can be dangerous, particularly venting (or not venting actually) a gas fired dryer inside a dwelling.it's also a PITA (pain in the ass), getting lint all over the place. About the only thing I've ever done is isolate the laundry room from the house with a door to the rest of the dwelling and open a 2d door in the laundry room to the outside. Ducting suction from the atttic is no more than a super efficient, uncontrolled and uncontrollable infiltration leak in/out of the dwelling when the dryer is not running.
My apologies on the solar clothes dryer comment. That's a bit of an inside joke. A solar clothes dryer is also known as a clothes line. Extremely cost effective with some psychologically therapeutic value.
Overalll, if widows and solar PV are the two least cost effective measures to lower a home's energy bill, and therefore and also very $$ intensive (expensive), the cost of materials to tighten up leaks is one of the least costly and tightening up a home/closing gaps is almost the most cost effective thing you can do. Short of simply turning stuff off, it's close to the top in terms of cost effectiveness. The sweat equity required is a bit high, made more so by the fact that in the caulking and insulation business attention to detail is paramount and (particularly with caulking) cleanliness IS next to Godliness. But, to the good side, none of that expense needs to come at one time.
Knowledge is power. Get more of the first and the second will follow.
Take what you want of the above. Scrap the rest.
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