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Serving Burlington, VT and surrounding areas. (802) 307-1480
Drafts near outlets, rooms that never warm up, and ice dams every winter are all signs your home has air leaks. We find and seal them with blower door-tested results - so you stop paying to heat the outdoors and start feeling the difference in every room.
Air sealing services in Burlington find and close the gaps, cracks, and openings where outside air sneaks in and your heated air leaks out - most jobs on a single-family home are completed in one to two days using spray foam, caulk, and weatherstripping in the attic, basement, and around plumbing and electrical penetrations. Unlike insulation, which slows heat transfer through surfaces, air sealing stops air movement through your home's structure entirely.
Burlington's older homes - built in the Hill Section, the Old North End, and the South End - were constructed long before anyone thought about airtightness. Over the decades, wood framing shrinks, plaster cracks, and gaps open up in places that are hard to see. If your home is more than 50 years old and has never had an energy assessment, there is a very good chance it has significant air leakage that no amount of new windows or extra insulation will fully fix on its own. Air sealing is also the best companion to basement insulation - sealing rim joists and foundation penetrations before adding insulation gets you the most out of both upgrades.
Hold your hand near an electrical outlet on an exterior wall on a cold day. If you feel cool air moving, that outlet is connected to a gap somewhere in the wall cavity that leads outside. The same is true for drafts near baseboards, around window trim, or at the top of interior walls. These are air leaks you can feel with your own hand - and they are fixable.
Ice dams - the ridges of ice that form at the roof edge and can force water under your shingles - are a well-known problem across Burlington and Chittenden County. They form when warm air escaping through your attic floor melts roof snow, which refreezes at the cold eaves. If you have seen ice ridges along your roofline or water stains on your ceiling after a heavy snow, air sealing the attic floor is the most direct fix.
If one bedroom is always 5 or 10 degrees colder than the rest of the house, or if your first floor feels comfortable while your second floor is freezing, that unevenness is often caused by air leaks rather than a heating system problem. Air moves through gaps in ways that create cold pockets, and no amount of adjusting the thermostat will fix a room that is losing heat through the walls or ceiling.
If your gas or electric bill climbs steeply every November and stays high through March, that is one of the clearest signs your home is losing heat faster than it should. Burlington's winters are long and cold, and a leaky home has to work much harder to stay warm. If your neighbors in similar-sized houses are paying noticeably less, air leakage is a likely culprit worth investigating.
We start every job with a blower door test - a large fan mounted in your front door that depressurizes the house so air rushes in through every gap and crack, making leaks easy to locate. That test gives us real data on exactly how leaky your home is and where the worst spots are, so we fix what actually matters rather than just what is easy to reach. We use spray foam for larger gaps around pipes and framing, caulk for smaller cracks along trim and baseboards, and weatherstripping for moving parts like doors. A thorough job uses all three in the right places. We also link air sealing directly to attic air sealing, which addresses the single biggest source of air leakage in most Burlington homes - the floor between your attic and living space.
After the work is done, we run a second blower door test to show you the before-and-after improvement in measurable numbers. You can see exactly how much tighter your home is - not just take our word for it. We also assess your home's ventilation needs as part of the job. A well-sealed home needs intentional fresh air management, and we make recommendations if upgrades are needed so your indoor air quality improves along with your comfort and energy bills. Vermont homeowners may qualify for Efficiency Vermont rebates that reduce your out-of-pocket cost.
Best for any home - measures air leakage before and after work so you have real data, not estimates.
Best for homes with ice dam problems or cold upper floors - closes the biggest source of air leakage in most Burlington homes.
Best for older homes with stone or rubble foundations where cold air and moisture enter from below the living space.
Best for homes that have never had an energy assessment - a systematic approach covering attic, basement, walls, and all penetrations.
Burlington averages around 8,000 heating degree days per year - a measure of how hard your heating system works over a winter season. That puts Burlington in the same league as Minneapolis in terms of heating demand. What that means in plain terms: every gap in your home's envelope is costing you real money every day from October through April. Burlington's residential neighborhoods - the Hill Section, the Old North End, the South End - are filled with homes built between the 1880s and the 1950s. Homes of that era were built before modern energy codes existed and were never designed to be airtight. Over the decades, wood framing shrinks and shifts, plaster cracks, and gaps open up in places that are hard to see. Vermont homeowners have a genuine advantage here: Efficiency Vermont offers rebates, low-interest financing, and free energy assessments that homeowners in most other states simply do not have access to.
We serve homeowners throughout greater Burlington. Homeowners in Winooski and Essex Junction call us regularly for the same problems - older wood-frame homes where air leaks have never been addressed, ice dams every February, and heating bills that do not match the size of the house. The blower door test consistently shows these homes are far leakier than the owners expected, and the improvement after sealing is almost always noticeable within the first heating season.
We ask a few basic questions about your home - age, biggest comfort complaints, and whether you have had an energy assessment before. We reply within 1 business day and can typically schedule a visit within one to two weeks.
Before any work begins, we walk through your home and run a blower door test to measure exactly how leaky it is. This takes about an hour and gives us real data - not guesses - on where the worst leaks are and what fixing them will cost.
You get a written estimate explaining what we found, what we recommend, and what it will cost. This is also the right time to ask about Efficiency Vermont rebates - we will walk you through what you qualify for before you decide anything.
We seal gaps with spray foam, caulk, and weatherstripping. After the work is done, we run a second blower door test to show you the before-and-after improvement. We provide full documentation of the work for your records and any rebate applications.
Free estimate. We run the blower door test first so you know exactly what you are dealing with before committing to anything.
(802) 307-1480We measure your home's air leakage before we start and again after we finish. You see the improvement in real numbers - not just a contractor's word that the work was done. That before-and-after data is also useful if you apply for Efficiency Vermont rebates or plan to sell your home.
Vermont homeowners have access to rebates and financing through Efficiency Vermont that most people in other states simply do not have. We are familiar with how the program works and can tell you what you qualify for before you commit to the work. That information has changed the calculus for many Burlington homeowners who had been putting the project off.
Most of the homes we work on in Burlington were built before 1950. We know where the leaks hide in pre-war wood-frame construction - the attic floor, the basement rim joists, around old plumbing and electrical penetrations, and behind plaster walls. We do not just spray foam in visible spots and move on.
Sealing a home without assessing ventilation is a shortcut we do not take. We follow guidance from organizations like the U.S. EPA ENERGY STAR program to make sure your home is breathing intentionally after it is sealed - so air quality improves along with comfort.
Every air sealing job we complete is backed by before-and-after blower door testing and written documentation. Burlington homeowners get measurable proof the work was done right - and a record they can point to for rebate applications or when they sell the home.
Insulating basement walls and rim joists - the natural next step after air sealing the foundation level of your home.
Learn moreTargeted sealing of the attic floor - the single most effective location to address in Burlington homes with ice dam or heat loss problems.
Learn moreBurlington's heating season starts in October. The sooner we seal the gaps, the sooner your home holds heat the way it should. Call or request a free estimate today.