Sealing up gaps, cracks, and openings in your home’s walls and ceilings can be one of the best payback and highest-ROI energy savings measures you can do.

Part of air sealing includes sealing up behind standard electrical outlets that you have in the wall. Most likely, all of these openings (when you take the outlet cover off) are unsealed holes that go directly into your wall.

This means that the conditioned air (heated or cooled air alike) that you work hard to pay for through your utility bill quickly escapes out through the walls. Or more specifically and as we learn in BPI energy auditor training (thermodynamics) – hot moves to cold. This means:

• In the winter the hot air you pay to heat escapes outward, into the colder outside air.
• In the summer we reverse this – the hot air is infiltrating into your house, making your air conditioner work that much harder.

It’s important to note that air sealing only really directly affects your HVAC (heating and cooling). By sealing up the house tighter, the HVAC system doesn’t have to work as hard.

Outlet Insulator Calculator Details

I wanted to build a calculator that shows roughly what you can save by installing these outlet insulator gaskets. They are cheap, install quickly (as a DIY), and while they may not make a massive dent in your energy bill, it’s really hard to beat the return on investment (as you’ll see).

I also love finance and the investing side of sustainability, so I built in a 10 year Return on Investment calculation, which includes inflation adjustments as well.

In reality, you probably won’t save more than 1% to 4% of your energy bill by doing this, but again the ROI is truly outstanding. You might be shocked at how many outlets (effectively holes in the wall) you have in your house. It really adds up.

You can also see the total square footage of openings you have between them all added up. In most cases, it’s like having a small window open 24/7.

With that, give it a try!

How Do You Install These Insulator Gaskets and Use The Calculator?

I made a video here going through the calculator, and going over how to count up and install these gasket insulator pads in your own home. Check it out here –

Where Do You Buy Outlet Insulator Gaskets?

The best place to buy them is on Amazon. For convenience, here is the link directly to the page to buy these (we get a tiny commission with this link).

I’ve bought these insulator packs multiple times for my own netzero home renovation and air sealing projects.

Do you want to learn more about these outlet insulators, including what the installation looks like? We wrote up a pretty good (we think) article here on it. Good luck with it and happy energy savings!