Today’s home energy conservation tip is to remind you that there are other similar gaps in your walls letting your heated air in the winter (or cooled air in the summer) leave your house and with it $.
Specifically, I am referred to electrical light switches on your exterior walls.
Yes, these have the same type of gaps that electrical outlets contain. The picture above contains a typical looking wall light switch with the cover on. Is it insulated? How can you tell? Let’s remove the cover, shall we. 
Well, would you look at that. Just look at the gaps in the wall hidden by the cover plate.
How do we insulate this?
Well the same way as we showed yesterday to insulate an electrical wall switch. Pictured above is the insulation gasket that just happens to be inserted into the back of the wall light switch plate / cover.
Now, what if your wall light switches are not the flat panel type like we have? Well, there is an insulating cover for you as well, as shown in the picture below.
Remember, this is a one time, cheap, simple insulation task that will take you no time at all to do. It will help reduce the air leaks in your home and thus reduce the amount of energy needed to keep your home warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
1 response so far ↓
1 Rebecca Atkinson (Muller) // Oct 17, 2008 at 8:22 pm
What an excellent reminder! We did this to our home not that long ago and could immediately feel the difference! When you take the covers off without any insulation you can feel a huge difference. We also did our eletrical switches and then bought the “child” safe plugs to stick in any outlets not being used. This wasn’t for safety (since we don’t have kids)- but to help ensure to stop any additional drafts coming fromt he plugs.
We spent less than $25 to do our whole home and are sure we saved hundreds already.
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