Home Energy Q & A: Define ‘weatherization’

Q: You’ve used a term in your articles that I’ve seen before but am not sure I fully understand. What exactly does “weatherization” mean? It clearly has to do with cutting home energy costs, but what does that include?

A: Basically, weatherization refers to all the different things you do to protect the envelope or shell of your home. It’s sealing the holes and cracks, putting in insulation, fixing or replacing windows, and other strategies that protect the home from the outdoor weather conditions.

I think you hear about it a lot for two basic reasons: many of the steps involved in weatherizing a home are fairly inexpensive and easy for a do-it-yourselfer to fix, but also because if you’re planning to do other things to save money — like buying new energy-efficient kitchen appliances or putting in a high-efficiency heater this winter, you really need to weatherize your home first to maximize the energy savings.

People often talk about “pay-back times” when they discuss energy-saving strategies. A typical solar water heater can pay for itself in energy savings in 5 to 8 years or so.

A set-back (also called an “automatic”) thermostat can pay for itself in savings in less than a year. You might recoup the extra costs of an energy-efficient refrigerator in just a year or two of use.

To really achieve many of these savings, though, your home needs to be weatherized so that unwanted airflow doesn’t take away the savings from something and limit the benefits of the other things you do. Weatherization is that basic first step in fixing up a home to be energy efficient.