Illinois homes take a beating. Blistering summers warp window seals. Windy winters punish old siding and chew through gaps in the walls. Across the state, weather doesn’t just pass—it breaks in and stays. Older homes feel it the most. A draft here. A cold floor there. Heating bills creep up, and no matter how high the thermostat gets bumped, some rooms stay cold. It’s not always neglect. A lot of times, it’s just age catching up.
Builders in the past didn’t have the codes or insulation standards we have now. Materials wore out. Settling foundations opened tiny gaps that never got sealed. Little by little, air moves in. Cold air. Hot air. Musty crawlspace air. And that’s how it starts. One winter you grab an extra sweater. The next, you’re buying space heaters. At some point, a question forms: why is this house always cold?
Furnaces Can’t Compensate Forever
Older homes push heating systems to their limits. A new high-efficiency furnace can’t save you if half the warm air escapes or never reaches the places it’s needed. The system runs longer. It breaks down more. That’s where people in colder towns start noticing: their units cycle constantly, but it still feels like winter inside.
Getting a furnace checked matters—especially when things feel off. For anyone facing this exact issue in northern Illinois, it’s worth looking into reliable furnace repair in Algonquin, IL. Local techs there deal with weather just as brutal as anywhere in the state, and they know how to adapt systems to aging homes that weren’t built for modern heating. The work isn’t always about replacing parts. Sometimes it’s duct adjustments. Other times it’s recalibrating airflow or fixing small electrical issues that cause bigger comfort problems. Done right, you don’t just get heat—you get balanced, even heat. And that’s the goal.
Drafts Don’t Always Start at the Window
Everyone blames the windows. Old single-pane glass rattles in the frame. Loose locks barely hold. And yeah, they leak—but drafts usually start somewhere else. Think crawlspaces. Basements. Attics. Wall cavities. Gaps form where floors meet walls. Vents leak. Outlets pull air through. The home breathes, but not in a good way.
Warm air rises. When it escapes from the attic, it creates suction below. Cold air gets pulled in through every crack it can find. That’s the stack effect. Most people don’t see it happening. But they feel it every time they pass that hallway that’s always freezing.
Insulation Gets Tired Too
Insulation isn’t forever. In older homes, it’s often packed down or missing altogether. In some cases, it was never installed in the first place. Builders figured plaster walls and thick brick did the job. Not anymore. Cellulose settles. Fiberglass sags. Vermiculite—if you’ve got it—might be toxic and useless.
A wall that looks solid could be holding nothing but air. Same with attic floors. Pull up a board and sometimes you’ll see wood and dust. Nothing else. That’s not insulation. That’s a recipe for discomfort.
Doors Don’t Seal Like They Used To
Old doors look charming. Heavy wood. Vintage glass. Original hardware. But check the edges. Gaps run along the sides, even if you can’t see them. You’ll feel them when cold air snakes in across your ankles. Thresholds wear down. Weatherstripping dries out. Hinges sag. Over time, a tight fit becomes a loose swing. Every inch counts. Even a pencil-width crack at the bottom of a door can bring in a surprising amount of cold air.
Ducts Leak. A Lot.
Ductwork in older homes wasn’t sealed the way it is now. Joints separate. Tape peels. Holes form. When heated air moves through those ducts, some of it never makes it to the room it’s supposed to warm. Instead, it gets dumped into basements or crawlspaces, where nobody benefits from it—except maybe some mice.
Sealing ducts helps. Rerouting them sometimes helps more. But this isn’t a DIY fix with tape and hope. It takes real work. Sometimes it takes starting over.
Age Messes With Pressure
Old homes weren’t built for forced-air systems. They had radiators. Fireplaces. Maybe gravity-fed furnaces. When ducts were added later, balance got thrown off. Air pushes too hard in some places. Not enough in others. Add a leaky envelope and the house turns into a pressure mess. One room overheats. Another barely warms. Thermostats don’t fix it. They just respond to what they sense, not what each room needs.
That uneven pressure pulls outdoor air in wherever it can. Which is exactly what you don’t want when it’s ten degrees outside and your living room feels like the inside of a fridge.
What You Can Actually Do About It
Most people try to fix drafts with band-aids. Plastic film over windows. Draft snakes. Rolled-up towels at the door. That stuff helps a little. But it doesn’t solve anything long-term. If the problem’s big, the fix has to go deeper.
Get a blower door test. It’s simple. A tech puts a giant fan in your door and sucks air out of the house. Then they measure how much outdoor air gets pulled in through leaks. They’ll find the weak spots. You’ll probably be shocked at where the air’s sneaking in.
Seal the attic. Everyone thinks of insulating the attic floor—but the bigger priority is sealing gaps around plumbing vents, chimneys, and top plates. Once that’s tight, the insulation you do have works better. Until then, it’s like trying to warm a room with a broken window.
Fix the basement or crawlspace. Cold floors are usually a crawlspace problem. Bare dirt, unsealed walls, uninsulated ductwork—it all adds up. Encapsulating a crawlspace or adding rigid foam insulation might not be cheap, but it shuts down a major source of drafts.
Check the walls. Insulating walls in an old house is tricky. You can blow cellulose into empty cavities, but if moisture isn’t handled right, problems show up later. Work with someone who knows what they’re doing. Sometimes air sealing from the inside (outlet gaskets, baseboard caulk) is the safer move.
Don’t forget the ducts. Get them sealed. Tested. Insulated if needed. If they’re a mess, it might be worth starting fresh with properly sized, well-routed ducts. Heating works better when the system’s tight.
Older Homes Can Still Be Comfortable
They just need help. No one wants to gut walls or tear up floors. But it’s not always that extreme. A few targeted upgrades can really turn things around. Fixing drafts isn’t about perfection—it’s about progress. Better comfort. Lower bills. Fewer surprises. A house that holds heat and feels steady no matter how ugly the wind gets outside.
And yeah, you’ll probably still keep that one blanket on the couch. But you won’t be clinging to it every time the temperature drops.
