In the meantime, I talked to a lot of experts in this field, all claiming that the cheapest and most useful investment you can make to save the money spent on heating and cooling the house is insulation of doors and windows. There is a new, very intelligent technology of placing thin aluminum strips, on the edges of doors or windows, touching the frame. The strips, placed at an angle, make a completely hermetic insulation by closing. This way, believe it or not, saves about 30 percent of heating energy. If you have central heating in your house, it still pays to install this. The central heating is turned off at night, but your apartment will still stay warm till the morning due to perfect carpentry sealing. The side effect is that the noise in your house will be reduced by 30 percent.
Another, even more important effect is that you can ventilate at night when the air is clean, but when there is smog, in rush hour traffic, you are completely protected in the apartment. The other day I installed this system in my apartment. The apartment, although we live in the city center, is as quiet as in the countryside. You can hear the clock ticking, like at my late grandmother 40 years ago! In the morning, the ominous smell of benzene and other “spells” of the industrial era does not creep into the apartment. The best part is that the installation is not expensive. 180 dinars per meter of carpentry. With all hands. One hundred euros for the whole apartment. Therefore, the investment returns through the saved electricity or other energy sources in the first half of winter.
The company which installs this is working in three shifts. There are a lot of smart people who realized that the money they threw on “street heating”, due to poor sealing, can be spent on something smarter. Look for them on the internet! Just type “door sealing” in Google search. A big step for both you and humanity. Winter is coming.