How to Winterproof Your Home
A 3-Step Guide to Improving Energy Efficiency, Preventing Water Damage and Achieving a More Comfortable Home
Canada has been making international headlines this January – one of them for experiencing some of the coldest temperatures on the planet. Canadians don’t need the news to confirm this. Even indoors, many households are feeling it, with drafty rooms, foggy windows and uneven temperatures becoming a part of daily life.
The instinct is to crank up the heat to stay comfortable, only to be met with an energy bill higher than the ceiling. But the good news is that there is an easier and more affordable way to stay warm, and it doesn’t involve major renovations or retrofits.
Winterproofing your home is one of the most effective ways to improve your comfort, reduce energy costs and lower a home’s environmental footprint, especially in the face of Canada’s brutal winters.
What is Winterproofing and Why Does it Matter?
Winterproofing your home involves a series of measures that prevent the harsh winter elements from entering your home. This involves sealing drafts and gaps, cleaning gutters and vents, adding insulation in attics and basements and shutting off exterior water sources. The idea is to keep your home dry and airtight by preventing leaks.
A winterproofed home does more than just keep the cold air out. It helps maintain consistent indoor temperatures by preventing heat loss through walls, attics, windows, and doors and prevents water leaks and moisture issues that can lead to mould or poor indoor air quality. And most importantly, it helps your home to be more energy efficient by reducing the strain on your heating system.
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Step 1: Prevent Air Leakage
Air leakage happens wherever there is a gap in your home’s building envelope, resulting in a pressure difference. Cold air from the outdoors is drawn in not just through doors and windows, but through cracks (both indoor and outdoor), electrical outlets, light fixtures, baseboards, ductwork, chimneys and other openings in your home.
A professional can of course help precisely identify leaks in your home by using a blower door test, smoke pencils and infrared scanners. But there’s also a DIY approach. You can burn an incense stick on a windy day and observe if the smoke moves straight up (no leak) or if it’s blowing around (leak).
Once you identify air leaks, you can use weatherstripping, caulking, tape or airtight sheets to seal them off. Sealing air leaks in your chimney and attic can be more challenging – a professional can do it with greater efficiency and accuracy.
If your window frame is cracked or deteriorating, reseal or repair to ensure airtightness. Once air leaks are sealed, think about adding insulation. Temporary window insulation film can add an additional buffer that delays heat loss. Heavy curtains or thermal blinds that you can close at night and open during sunny days also add a thermal buffer.
Step 2: Insulate
Attics and basements are major sources of heat loss. Older homes especially suffer here. It’s estimated that for homes built before 2009, almost 80 percent of attics are underinsulated by at least R-20 and 85 percent of basements are underinsulated by at least R-5.
If houses in Canada met their full insulation retrofit potential, the country would save billions of cubic metres of natural gas and billions of kWh of electricity every year. It’s well worth checking if your house is fully insulated and remedying that if that’s not the case. Insulation loses performance over time, particularly fibreglass batts due to compression and moisture and cellulose due to settling and water damage.
Even if your attic and basement have insulation, gaps and air leaks can allow warm indoor air to escape and cold air to enter. Over time, this can lead to frost buildup, mould, rot and even ice dams along the roof.
Start by checking for drafts or cold air movement using the incense trick. Seal air leaks first then add additional insulation (eg. mineral wool or fibreglass batts). This can be a DIY project, but requires a fair amount of expertise and effort. Additionally, ensure that you seal or insulate your attic hatch as this connection with the indoors can affect indoor temperatures.
Though sealing and insulating are the keys to good winterproofing, you don’t want to seal your home completely shut. It’s about controlling where air enters and exits so that moisture doesn’t build up and indoor air remains healthy. As your home gets tighter, it is also critical to ventilate in a controlled manner.
Blocked vents can risk undoing all your winterproofing gains. Your bathroom vents and kitchen fans should be cleaned to allow venting of stale air outdoors. When you seal and insulate your attic, ensure you don’t block vents in the attic.
Step 3: Prevent Water Damage
Clear your gutters and downspouts and ensure that your downspout directs water away from the foundation. Poor water drainage may result in water seeping into your basement, leading to dampness, mould and long-term structural issues. Blocked gutters also contribute to ice dams forming on the roof since they do not allow melting snow to drain away.
Inside the home, check floor drains and sump pumps to ensure they’re working properly and not leaking or overflowing. Pay close attention to the attic and basement, looking for damp or compacted insulation, water stains, musty smells or visible mould.
Addressing water issues early is critical. Moisture problems increase indoor humidity, reduce insulation effectiveness and can make your home feel colder even when the heat is on. Calling a professional to diagnose and fix water leaks is the safest and most effective approach to keeping your home dry and comfortable during the winter.
Winterproofing and Energy-efficiency Incentives Available in Canada
A number of provinces offer programs that assist with winterproofing and energy efficiency retrofits. Listed below are a few. For a larger list of federal, provincial, municipal and utility incentive programs available in Canada, go to our Incentive Finder.
Enbridge Home Winterproofing Program (Ontario)
If your home requires fairly expensive upgrades for winterproofing, you can take advantage of support programs like Enbridge Gas’ Home Winterproofing Program to help remove financial barriers.
Eligible households can receive free energy efficiency fixes like draftproofing and insulation, a smart thermostat, and appliance upgrades, all at no cost to the homeowner or tenant. The program is designed to promote affordability to equity-deserving residents and therefore has a strict eligibility. If you are a tenant, you can still qualify with a permission letter from your landlord.
You qualify if your household income fits the criteria laid out in the program qualification. You may be eligible if you are enrolled in government social assistance programs like Ontario Works, Ontario Disability Support Program, Allowance for Seniors and others listed in the qualification criteria.
Starting with a free home assessment, a professional would visit your home and evaluate the type and extent of upgrades needed. If an assessment deems that your home is well-insulated and is energy efficient, you may not qualify for upgrades.
Rénoclimat (Quebec)
Rénoclimat provides financial assistance for doing a variety of energy efficiency upgrades. They give up to $3,750 per upgrade (eg. insulation of roofs, exterior walls, foundation, exposed flooring and Energy Star certified doors and windows).
The program is open to owners of a detached home, duplex, triplex, multi-unit residential buildings with no more than three storeys and a maximum area of 600 square metres.
Clean Energy Improvement Program (Alberta)
This loan program offers competitive interest rates and terms up to 20 years to finance residential energy efficiency upgrades such as insulation, solar, heat pumps, air sealing, windows and doors, HVAC and energy efficient lighting; repayment is tried to the property tax bill, not the owner. The program is open to property owners in participating municipalities in Alberta.
BetterHomesBC (BC)
BetterHomes BC offers a broad range of rebates to homeowners mostly for retrofitting existing homes to improve their energy efficiency (eg installing a heat pump, purchasing appliances, adding insulation, installing new windows and doors) as well as a few incentives for building and renovating (eg. tax rebates and partial refunds on insurance premiums). The program is open to residential homes in BC.
Winterproofing as Climate Action
Winterproofing your home can be affordable both for one-time capital expenses, as well as in the longer term with decreasing energy bills. But more importantly, it is a powerful climate action tool. By enabling efficient use of energy, you will be putting lesser burden on our energy systems that largely rely on fossil fuels. As it is said, ‘the most efficient energy is the one that is not used.’ This year, take a stand against climate change by winterproofing your home.
