You may already know where some air leakage occurs in your home, such as around doors and windows, but you'll need to find the less obvious gaps to do a proper job of air sealing your home.

The best way to identify and measure air leaks is to hire a BPI accredited contractor to conduct an energy audit, including a blower door test. This test depressurizes a home, and through the process can reveal the location of many leaks. 

There are other, lower cost, ways to find some air leaks yourself. First, look at areas where different materials meet, such as between foundation and walls, between wood and brick, or between the chimney and siding. Also inspect around the following areas for holes or cracks or gaps that could cause air leaks:

You can also try these steps to depressurize your home to help detect leaks:

1. Turn off your furnace on a cool, very windy day.
2. Shut all windows and doors.
3. Turn on all exhaust fans that blow air outside, such as bathroom fans or stove vents.
4. Light an incense stick and pass it around the edges of common leak sites. Wherever the smoke is sucked out of or blown into the room, there's a draft.

**Note: If you don't want to turn off your furnace, you can just turn on all your exhaust fans to depressurize your home.

Other air-leak detection methods include the following:

• Shining flashlight at night over all potential gaps while a partner observes the house from outside. Large cracks will show up as rays of light. This is only good for detecting large cracks.
• Shutting a door or window on a piece of paper. If you can pull the paper out without tearing it, you're losing energy.

Learn more on the Home Energy Audit and Weatherstripping pages.