The photo to the left is a thermal image of an ordinary kitchen wall.
The dark blue box at the bottom of the photo is the top of the kitchen cabinets. The red is hot attic air running through the wall down to the basement.
The wall is enclosing a "vent chase" which is where the exhaust for the furnace and hot water heater run up and out of the house.
As is common in many homes, the vent chase was left open to the attic and the basement when the house was built.
It should have been sealed, but that was almost never done until a few years ago. Even today, it's a detail that most builders miss.
The affect of this inattention to detail is a "wind tunnel" of super hot or cold attic air (dirty, too) that can be drawn into the house by the furnace. Other times, heated or cooled air can escape into the attic.
Either way, you lose conditioned air and must spend money to cool or heat the replacement air.
At Home Green Home, we see one of our major rolls as being a "house detective" to figure out how air is moving and how energy is wasted. We then recommend and install the required fixes resulting in reduced energy use, lower energy bills, cleaner breathing air and a greener house.
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