Cosy Homes Club: DIY Draughtproofing with Carbon Co-op

Written by Tom Doubtfire, Cosy Homes Club Citizen researcher

Last week we were joined at Kitty’s Launderette by Laurence and Lorenza from Carbon Co-op (https://carbon.coop), for our DIY Draughtproofing workshop.

Carbon Co-op is an organisation based in Manchester who work to help people and communities make radical reductions in carbon emissions – this includes carrying out area based retrofit schemes, something we are working towards achieving for people in Anfield and Everton as well.

Between all of us who attended, there was an even mix of homeowners, private renters and people renting with social housing. This provided a good base for discussion and for sharing experiences, as there were people had already carried out some measures to make their homes more energy efficient and were here to learn more!

We learnt that around 15% of heat loss is from draughts. There is a difference between draughts and ventilation as well: a draught is classed as unwanted air flow, which results in heat being lost through gaps, cracks and holes in the home, whereas ventilation is planned air flow that removes stale air from the home and replaces it with fresh air.

Top tip: No more packing your air bricks with expanding foam and blocking the ventilation!

We found that common places for draughts in our own homes were floorboards, fireplaces and chimneys, doors, worn out window seals and vents, and were told how gaps around pipework and ceiling spotlights can be unexpected places where a lot of heat is lost also. We then discussed solutions available to us to tackle some of these problems. The main thing we learnt is to find and address the point at which the draught enters the home, as this is most effective in making our homes draught proof. Air acts like water so if we’re not thorough it will always find a new way to enter, therefore draught proofing at the source is essential.

Some possible DIY solutions include using threshold strips for doors or making our own draught excluders, using sealant to redo the seal on our windows and tackling the gaps in our floorboards using either Draughtex (or something similar) or by hammering thin pieces of wood into the gaps, sanding them down afterwards.

Thanks to Laurence and Lorenza, and the experiences we shared as a group, we came away from the workshop keen to get stuck in draught proofing our own home, as well as more confident in sharing some of this knowledge with people while carrying out research with the Cosy Homes Club.

At this stage of the Cosy Homes Club project, the research team is looking to conduct observations, interviews and focus group with people and organisations in Anfield and Everton. The aim is to find out more about what local people think about energy efficiency and attitudes towards retrofitting. If you want to know more about the research and find out ways you can get involved, please reach out to Rachael Branton, Project Lead, or Josh Blamire, Research Lead, who will be happy to chat a bit more about the project.

Rachael Branton, Project Lead: rachael.branton@homebaked.or.uk

Josh Blamire, Research Lead: j.blamire@wlv.ac.uk