Use Interior Window Insulation Kits to Winterize Your Home and Cut Heating Costs

Given the current economic downturn, many homeowners may be addressing, for the first time, the need to truly winterize their homes. If you live in an old house with old imperfect windows, one of cheapest and most effective ways to stop heat from escaping is to use window insulation. This means not only weather stripping between the windows and sashes, but applying plastic that covers the entire window from top to bottom.

You may be thinking: What could be less dignified than to have plastic on the outside of ones windows for all the world to see? However, window insulation needn't be unsightly or difficult to install. The secret is to use the interior clear plastic window film, which is purchased in insulation kits-- the kind that require a hair dryer to tighten and make wrinkle free. These kits are inexpensive, easy to use and the results are crystal clear nearly invisible coverings that you will forget are even there. The best brands I have tried are made by 3M Company and Frost King. Another popular kit is available from Ace Hardware.

Plastic insulation kits for windows have been around a long time. But the thick exterior window plastic is hard to apply, susceptible to coming loose and are awful to look at. And, being just slightly cloudy, it is hazy to look through. What could be worse than foggy windows!

The interior window kits, however, are just as widely available and can be found at hardware and home supply stores for about a cost of about two dollars per 42 inch by 62 inch window. They come equipped with double-sided tape and folded panels of thin plastic film. To install, you first apply the double sided tape to your cleaned window frame. Perhaps the most significant downside to this kind of installation is that if your window frames are painted, the strip will, when you remove your plastic in the warmer months, very likely peel and chip your paint. The solution is to keep a small can of the correct color paint on hand and simply repaint this area should it be necessary. As annoying as this possibility may be, it is no less damaging to your house than applying exterior plastic with a staple gun-- depositing hundreds of staples to you wooden window frames!

The plastic film sheets are thus unfolded and places as flatly as possible across the sticky tape which you have already applied around your window frame. You just press the plastic with your hand around this border smoothing it and achieving a good seal. You then aim a warm hair blower at the window plastic. Then comes the fun part! The warmth causes the wrinkles and uneven areas to pull tight. Do this evenly around all the parts of the window and you will have a crystal clear tightly sealed plastic insulation around your window. You will instantly feel a diminishment of drafty air coming through the window seams.

http://www.acehardware.com/sm-ace-indoor-window-insulation-kit-2506-ah--pi-1286195.html

http://www.3m.com

http://www.frostking.com/windowweather.php