Thank you for the info.
I'll be adding more insulation to the attic for sure, and my additional weather stripping is in the mail. I bought insulation today for all the outlets and light switches.
I found another place I know I am loosing heat. I have a custom doggy door in the wall of my garage. It's locked now but the only thing between the garage and the outside it 3/4" ply wood. I need to get some insulation and install it behind the door to take care of that.
I need some advice on this next topic; garage doors. I have heard a lot on both sides whether I am loosing heat from the doors themselves or not. They are insulated with 1 1/2" styrofoam insulation inside the door panels themselves. My bouilder believes this is enough and does not think I am loosing anything. The insulation company believes I am loosing some, but very minor amounts, and that much more is lost in the seals around the garage doors. The tech associate at Lowes who has worked insulation for over a decade believes I am loosing a bit from the doors themselves. It would be best to just insulate everything to cover all my bases, but I don't have an unlimited budget, and would rather spend money wisely on what will make the biggest difference if I can't afford it all. I bought some thin reflective roll insulation that I can cut and hopefully install on the back of the garage doors at Lowes today for $100. I still need to figure out how I'm going to install them as it is not a kit (a garage door kit for my sized doors is more than $200). I still have the reciept, and may return it if I can't figure a good way to install it, or if I find that it won't really make much of a difference.
Any thoughts on this? To me I think I'm loosing some because there is visible frost on the back sides of the doors. But my builder and mostly the insulation guy both think I'm not really losing much if anything, so if I could return it and save $100 to invest elsewhere, I would like to.
As far as the garage door, it's probably a R6, my garage doors is 1-3/8'' thick and is the same type of styrafoam stuff and its R6 I believe. So your walls are probably atleast a R13, so less then half then R value, so your loosing heat/cold about 2 faster from garage doors then the walls, your windows being double pane are probably R3 at best, and look at how many windows are in a house.
As mentioned tho, the ceiling is where the majority of the heat loss is, I would say my doors do pretty well, but have thought about adding 3/4 or 1'' foam board with some Velcro or silicone.
I would worry about the leaks and drafts and maybe getting some more insulation in the ceiling before worrying about the door. Do your doors point north? If they do, that's a good bit of negative degree air that came in that night.
We had about the same weather the other night ( -18 with 40-50 below wind chill) and a small sit on the top of a propane tank heater and a 1500w electric heater and hit a little over 50* in about a hour and a half then I shut the propane down, I started getting a headache from the fumes.
