Preparing For Cold Weather – House Tightness

With cold weather right around the corner and predictions of record high fuel prices, now is the time to get your houses ready for cold weather. There are a number of things you can do to your houses that do not cost a lot that can help to keep your fuel bills to a minimum, the most important of which is making sure your houses are as tight as possible. The tighter a house is the less expensive it will be to heat. Increasing house tightness not only minimizes the amount of heat loss when the win...d is blowing but it also helps to insure that when you are ventilating, all the cold fresh air is entering through your inlets and not through cracks in the walls and ceiling. Air entering through cracks does not tend to mix with the warm air next to the ceiling which can lead to low temperatures and drafty conditions at floor level. Furthermore, since cold air cannot hold as much moisture as warm air it is less effective at removing excess moisture from the litter leading to caked litter and ammonia.