Draught Proofing Information Hub
Find the Leaks * Fix the Right Gaps * Control the Air *
Is your home freezing in winter, roasting in summer or mysteriously dusty five minutes after you have cleaned it? Can you smell bushfire smoke indoors with every window shut? Does spring arrive inside your house several weeks before the garden starts flowering?
Uncontrolled air leakage may be part of the problem.
Your home is full of places where air can sneak in and out: underneath doors, around windows, through chimneys, vents and exhaust fans, between floorboards and through gaps that have quietly appeared over the years.
While the air you have paid to heat or cool escapes through those openings, outside air arrives to replace it - bringing cold, heat, dust, pollen, smoke and other outdoor pollutants along for the ride.
Draught proofing finds and seals the gaps that should not be there.
The result is a home that is easier to heat and cool, more comfortable throughout the year and much less willing to share its indoor air with the entire neighbourhood.
In a very leaky home, quality draught proofing can reduce heating and cooling costs by 20% to 45%. That is an impressive return from fixing a collection of gaps most people cannot even see (but they CAN feel)...
Welcome to the Draught Proofing Information Hub
This Hub will help you work out:
- where air is leaking into and out of your home
- which openings should be sealed
- which openings must remain ventilated
- which type of seal suits each door or window
- which jobs you can tackle yourself
- which products will provide a lasting result
- where to start if your whole house appears to be participating
There is no single draught-proofing product that works everywhere.
A chimney is not a door. A hinged door is not a cavity slider. An aluminium sliding window behaves very differently from a timber double-hung window. An exhaust fan needs to operate when it is switched on - but should not behave like an open hole in the ceiling when it is off. The right solution depends on what is leaking, how it operates and whether the opening is still needed. That is why we built this Hub
The Quick Explanation: What Is a Draught?
A draught is uncontrolled air movement through your home.
It is not only the cold breeze you feel under a door in winter.
Draughts also allow:
- heated air to escape during winter
- cold outdoor air to enter
- cooled air to escape during summer
- hot summer air to push inside
- dust to travel through subfloors, roof spaces and wall cavities
- bushfire smoke, pollen and outdoor pollutants to enter through closed doors and windows
One tiny gap may not seem important. But combine the gaps around every door, window, vent, fan, floorboard, chimney and building junction, and your home may have the equivalent of a permanently open window.
Your heater and air conditioner then have to keep conditioning the replacement air. You pay to make the air comfortable. Your house promptly swaps it for whatever is happening outside.
Draught Proofing Is About Control
A comfortable, healthy home needs ventilation. The important question is: who controls it? When you open a window to catch the cool change, that is ventilation. When you switch on the bathroom exhaust fan after a shower, that is ventilation. When hot air pushes through a closed window, cold air slips beneath the door or wind pours down an unused chimney, that is a draught.
Draught proofing does not mean sealing every opening and never allowing fresh air inside again. It means stopping uncontrolled leakage so that you decide when, where and how your home is ventilated.
Before You Seal Anything
Some openings are essential for safety, moisture management or the operation of appliances. If your home burns gas inside for cooking or heating, some vents may be required for combustion safety. Do not seal wall vents, flues or other openings associated with gas appliances without appropriate professional advice.
Carbon monoxide is invisible, odourless and potentially lethal.
Never seal external wall-cavity vents, subfloor vents or anything required for structural ventilation or moisture control.
The aim is to seal the right gaps - not every hole you can find.
A Door Snake Is Not Whole-Home Draught Proofing
The gap underneath the front door is usually the draught everyone notices. Unfortunately, it is rarely the only one. Draughts can occur anywhere one part of the building meets another—and anywhere a hole has been created through the floor, walls or ceiling.
Use the sections below to investigate your home one area at a time. The five main areas are:
A thorough job investigates all five. That does not mean you need to fix the entire house this weekend. Start with the biggest leaks and work through them logically OR work on a room by room basis. Find out more about our Comfort Series.
We Have Done the Research - and a Great Deal of Crawling Around Houses
ecoMaster has spent more than 20 years finding and fixing draughts in Australian homes. We have installed draught-proofing products in more than 20,000 homes and helped even more Aussies complete their own DIY improvements.
That experience has taught us two important things:
- Small gaps can combine to create an enormous problem.
- The right product in the right place makes all the difference.
We test the products we sell. Where a suitable long-term solution did not exist, we developed one. And we provide detailed installation videos because even a brilliant product will not work particularly well if it is attached to the wrong part of the door.
Completely New to Draught Proofing?
Start with What Is Draught Proofing? for the full explanation.
Take ecoMaster’s Find and Fix My Draughts course and work through your home in a logical order. We can talk about draught proofing with a mouth full of marbles under water - it’s our ‘thing’. And it should be your ‘first thing’ to make your home more comfortable too! It is, most likely, the cheapest and most effective upgrade you can make in your home.
Already know what you need?