How to seal windows for Winter

If your apartment is too cold, there are several things you can do to warm it up. You can buy some heaters and risk blowing a fuse, short-circuiting your entire building or burning down your apartment.

You can buy new state-of-the-art, air-tight windows at an enormous cost.

Or, you can seal your windows yourself, using masking tape and foam Р thus eliminating fire danger and saving yourself a lot of money.

All you need to seal up windows is masking tape, paste and foam rubber. Some people use strips of wallpaper instead of tape Р which is an old Soviet method. These days, however, itХs more convenient to buy ready-made materials.

Masking tape for sealing windows is usually sold in shops that deal in household products. At the office supplies department of TsUM (Tsentralny Univermag, 2 Khmelnytskoho) you can buy a roll of masking tape for 78 kopeks or a thicker type for Hr 1.09.

YouХll also need foam rubber ribbons. Which can be purchased at TsUM. A 10-meter ribbon costs from Hr 2 to Hr 4 depending on its thickness and width. Though itХs not very aesthetic, some people use old newspapers, cotton or other scraps instead of foam.

Once you have the tape and foam, itХs time to make the paste. You can do this in your kitchen simply by dissolving several spoonfuls of starch or flour in a small amount of cold water. Then pour it into a liter of boiling water, and let it cool.

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The next step is to fill the cracks in the windows with foam.

The final stage is to take a brush and spread paste on the masking tape and then stick it over the window cracks.

During Soviet times it was common for people to use white, medical tape to seal windows. Nowadays the extra-wide medical tape is a rare find because most drugstores sell imported goods rather than good old Soviet band-aides.

If youХre not worried about cost, the easiest way to seal a window is just to buy sticky foam rubber in household department of TsUM or any other big store. The 6-meter roll costs Hr 7.02, a thicker roll costs Hr 15.60. But it tends to fall off when the glue dries out.

Sealing windows usually takes from one to three hours depending on oneХs professionalism. And make sure you leave the fortochka (small upper window) unsealed. Otherwise you will deprive yourself of fresh air for the whole winter, which can be unhealthy.

The drawback of sealing widows is that in the spring it is hard to pull off the masking tape. YouХll probably spend the same amount of time undoing the damage as you spent sealing the windows.

But for now, itХs better than freezing in your own home.

Olga Kryzhanovska

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