Air Sealing
 

The best way to reduce your utility bills is to eliminate air leaks in your house. I want to tell you about an existing product that offers an additional way to save energy that many homeowners do not know about. The Larson Fan Company offers a replacement fan assembly that has an automatic, built in damper for the most common bathroom ventilation fans in this country. Their product has a true damper, not a flimsy flap that is design to let air out when the fan is running.

When the fan is not running, which is most of the time on average, the damper is close, keeping warm air in the house during winter or hot humid air out during the summer. That reduces the amount of time your heating or cooling equipment needs to run, and that lowers your energy usage and utility bills. It really is a simple concept and will save the most when central air is being used because cooling uses more energy than heating.
This is a great DIY project with a low upfront cost, easy installation from inside the house that you can do in about five minutes.

Getgreener,

Welcome :D! We lived in Michigan some 30 years ago (Durand and East Lansing). Great suggestion on the Larson fan.

A good alternative if you can't get the scratch together for an heat recovery ventilaror (HRV). Just finished a home where we put four of the Panasonic units in.

Steve

Could something like this work to prevent heat loss for bath fans?
HEARTLAND 21000 Dryer Vent Closure - Amazon.com

I would certainly think so.

Thanks for posting this link. My dryer is leaking cold air in so I just ordered this.

I have one, works well. I had to caulk around the brick where the vent goes through the wall in order to get a good seal. No more cold laundry room from dryer backdraft.

A small heat exchanger even homemade would be good to incorporate as a tight house is not necessarily that healthy to live in.

My Stove/ Oven vent provides circulation , from the basement up, I Imagine anyways.

On a side note , I unplugged & blocked my bathroom fan off with cardboard so the roof is not venting its hot air. I use the bathroom window instead of the fan in there.

I leave the Stoves exhaust fan operational with a sloppy vent flap as it does provide about all my built in ventilation. Pretty cheap ventilation system at that haha..

I installed this over the weekend. I had to use calking and I used Tap-Cons I had left over from the mini split install. This is a great item it lets no air in from the outside. This was a major improvement.

I did read in the instructions it can be used for bathroom vent they have a spring kit for low flow applications.

I figured if air is goign to leak OUT of a room to the outside, the bathroom is at the top of the list ;) I just used a "dryer flap" on my bathroom fan.