Cold Air Coming Through Wall Outlets

If you want to see just how much cold air is entering your house through an electrical outlet hold a paper tissue over one to check.

Cold air coming through wall outlets.

What you dont feel is the warm moist air leaving your hose thru the outlets and switches on the negative side carrying warm air and moisture vapor. Department of energy s doe oak ridge national laboratory. Gap around just six ceiling boxes is the equivalent of cutting a 4 in. Think of the amount of heat you d lose.

Hole in your ceiling. Turn off the central power to your home. It s winter and your home is closed up tight to keep out the cold air but you still feel a draft. In older homes those holes weren t sealed.

Remove the cover of all the electrical outlets that are on outside walls. Keep the cold air from coming in through your electrical outlets. You can expect higher heating and cooling bills if you have a lot of air infiltrating into your home. Even in newer homes where building inspectors generally enforce fire codes that require those holes to be air sealed attic air still gets into the wall from the gap.

And on walls where there is no insulation or insufficient insulation cold air circulating inside the wall finds a perfect pathway into living. Electrical outlets fitted to an outside wall can allow cold air to leak into your home so you need to stop it. The items you should buy are foam wall plate insulators outlet gaskets and child safety outlet plugs as shown in this image. While it s still just cool weather this is a good time to stock up on supplies before the prices jump and stores run out of them.

Because the wires that came to that switch or outlet probably came through holes drilled through the top or bottom of that wall. Most people notice this in the winter when cold air blows through a wall outlet on an exterior wall. The reason for this is simple. Or in the summer when the hot 100 f air finds its way into your cool inside living space.

In fact a mere 1 8 in. Even if a wall or ceiling is sufficiently insulated the insulation may have been cut away to make room for the electrical boxes which means these spots become conduits for cold air to pass through from the outside. Sometimes especially in older homes and on exterior walls light switch boxes and electrical outlets can let in outside air if they are not insulated properly according to the u s. Where could it be coming from.

When you combine that with the. The small air gaps around electrical boxes on exterior walls and ceilings leak more air than you might imagine. If the tissue flaps or moves around it is because there is a draft coming through the outlet.