Living Efficiently With Tom: Airsealing Electrical Outlets

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Stopping drafts is possibly the best low-cost way to improve your home's energy efficiency and comfort. In the future, I'll write about sealing obvious spots – the gaps around doors, window frames, etc. – but this post looks at a more obscure but effective way to prevent drafts: sealing electrical outlets and switches on the inside of exterior walls.

Hole in the Wall

Walls are, of course, the main thing that keeps the wind from coming in, and even the drywall or plaster in the interior of your house provides some insulation as well as a barrier against drafts.

Electrical outlets and switches are essentially holes in the interior surface of the walls. And the boxes that hold the outlets and switches are not air tight.

How much this matters will vary quite a lot depending on how airtight the exterior of your home is: if no air is getting into your wall cavity this won't be much of a problem. And if there is no wall cavity – say, if you have solid masonry walls – this definitely isn't a problem. But this winter was a chilly and windy one, and I noticed wind blowing out of the electrical outlets in our basement bedroom.

Something needed to be done.

Sealing Outlets and Switches, Three Ways

There were three different things I did to various outlets – particularly the offending basement bedroom ones.

First off, I caulked between the electrical box and the drywall. When the boxes were first installed, the cut hadn't been 100 percent perfect (not that you'd expect it to be), leaving a bit of a gap.

First, I took off the faceplate off the outlet.

Next, I installed some foam inserts with the appropriately-shaped cutouts that I'd purchased at my local hardware store. These inserts cover the space between the outlets and the electrical box, and fit under the faceplate. You could also make them yourself, if you had some foam laying about (preferably non-flammable foam).

Then, for the outlets with the most noticeable draft, I installed faceplates with spring-loaded covers for the actual holes that plugs plug in to. I've seen these marketed as both energy-saving and child-safe – in fact, the ones at my hardware store that said "child safety" looked to be the exact same as the 'energy saving' ones.

You can also use the little plastic covers with prongs to stick into the outlet; these, too, are dually marketed for stopping drafts and stopping children.

So now these outlets are nice and snug. No more holes in the walls!

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