Australian houses were not all built to the same tightness. A Queenslander, a 1970s brick veneer, a limestone cottage and a recent NatHERS-rated townhouse share appliances and do not share cracks. Your Home treats draught proofing as one of the first fabric jobs because uncontrolled air is uncontrolled heating and cooling. This guide is the household method. It is not a blower-door certificate and it does not invent a percentage saving for your postcode.
Answer first
Find the leaks you can feel, then seal the large, simple ones — doors, unused open fireplaces, and exhaust fans that do not shut — before you talk about foam in a wall cavity. Keep combustion air and moisture in the plan. If the work cuts a frame or a wet area, stop and use a licensed person.
Why draughts are an energy story
Heaters and coolers try to hold a temperature. Air that leaves the room takes that effort with it, and incoming air brings the climate you were trying to avoid. Your Home’s energy material puts sealing beside insulation and shading because they are one system. A sealed room with no insulation can still be miserable. An insulated room that whistles at the door still spends energy arguing with the southerly.
NatHERS models infiltration as part of a design rating. Your existing house may never see an assessor. It still obeys the same physics. DCCEEW explains the code-level push toward better thermal performance in new homes; this guide is for the house you already sleep in.
How to find leaks without a gadget
Wait for wind or a temperature difference. Use the back of your hand at door heads, meeting stiles, window sashes, floorboard gaps, downlights, attic hatches, and the skirt of a roller door. A stick of incense or a thin tissue shows movement if you like theatre. A night walk is better than a lunchtime walk in many climates.
Listen. A bathroom fan that runs because the switch is forgotten is a designed hole. A rangehood that idles is a designed hole. An unused chimney is a designed hole with a romantic reputation.
Look for light under external doors at night. Light is an air path.
Do not confuse a necessary vent with a failure. Some gas appliances, some subfloor spaces and some older water heaters require air. Covering those because a video said “seal everything” is how people get moisture and carbon monoxide stories. If a plate says the appliance needs ventilation, believe the plate and a licensed gasfitter.
Room by room
Entry doors. The cheapest reversible kit is a door snake and adhesive compression or silicone seals that you can peel later. The better permanent fix is a correctly fitted door with a threshold and seals a carpenter understands. Weatherboard cottages often fail at the meeting of floor and door. Apartments often fail at the stairwell door people prop open.
Windows. Sliding aluminium from the 1980s leaks at the felt. Timber sashes leak at the staff bead. Temporary film and removable seals help renters. Permanent work can include weatherstrips and, when the window is finished, a better unit chosen with Your Home’s glazing notes — not with a brand slogan.
Exhaust and ceiling. Fans with working dampers beat fans that are just holes. Downlights that punch through a ceiling also punch through insulation; Your Home and product standards have more to say about IC-rated fittings than this paragraph will invent. An attic hatch without a seal is a second front door.
Floors and walls. Floorboard gaps in older houses can be large. Rugs help comfort; they do not replace a builder if the subfloor is the actual wind tunnel. Cracks at skirting can be caulk if the material is suitable. Structural movement is a builder.
Fireplaces. An unused open fireplace is a column of air. A proper damper, a balloon designed for the job, or a sealed register is the conversation. Do not stuff newspaper into a flue and call it a sustainability project.
Renters
You can do more than you think and less than an influencer thinks. Removable seals, snakes, heavy curtains with pelmets you installed, and a rolled towel on a particularly rude night are all in-bounds. Photograph the room before and after so you can restore it. Write to the owner if the door never met the frame. Attach the Your Home energy page so the request looks like maintenance, which it is.
Do not silicone a sash you cannot later explain. Do not tape an external weep hole shut because a forum told you to.
Moisture, mould and climate
A tighter house needs a plan for steam. Use the fan when you cook and shower. Dry clothes where the moisture can leave. If mould is already a health problem, sealing random gaps is not the whole medical response — use health-department mould guidance and fix the leak that feeds it.
Tropical and humid climates use night ventilation on purpose. Sealing is not a religion. Your Home’s climate notes exist so Darwin is not treated like Delegate. In bushfire-prone areas, some vents have ember rules; those are building-code and CFA/RFS-type documents, not a lifestyle blog.
What this work is worth, without a fake number
We will not tell you that draught proofing “cuts bills by X per cent”. That figure depends on how leaky you were, what you heat with, and the tariff. The honest claim is the one Your Home already makes: uncontrolled air makes conditioning plants work harder, and sealing is a first-order fabric task.
If someone quotes a rebate for seals, make them open energy.gov.au that week. This article will not freeze an amount.
Briefing a tradesperson
Write the rooms that are miserable, the fuel of any combustion appliance, and whether you rent. Ask for seals, dampers and door adjustments before you ask for a new split system. If they lead with a new system, ask them to read this paragraph and the Your Home draught page first.
A builder doing a renovation should talk about sealing in the same breath as insulation. The insulation guide is the sibling article. The energy hub is the parent.
Draughts are unglamorous. They are also one of the last household energy actions that still works when a gadget subscription ends. Close the door that is already open.
A weekend sequence without shopping
Saturday morning: walk the windward side and mark gaps with painter’s tape so you do not forget the quiet ones. Saturday afternoon: fit removable door seals and a snake at the worst door. Sunday: check exhaust fans for a damper that actually closes, and write the owner if a fan is just a hole. Leave the combustion-air question on a note for a licensed gasfitter if a heater or cooktop needs air by design.
If you did nothing else this year, that weekend would still be a real energy project. It cites Your Home. It does not cite a fake percentage. It does not need a rebate to be worth doing.
Apartments should add the stairwell door that is wedged open and the bathroom fan that runs because the switch is forgotten. Those are community draughts wearing a household face.
Sources to keep open while you act
Keep Your Home, energy.gov.au, Energy Rating, Water Rating, NatHERS, DCCEEW and your state EPA in the same browser window as this guide. If a sentence on this domain ever sounds more specific than those pages, believe those pages.
That habit is the guest-post standard as well. A green-living article that cannot survive a source click is a press release. A green-living article that sends a household to WELS, a council bin list, or the NCC explanation on DCCEEW is doing the civic job.
Tenure, climate and the refusal to average you
A renter in a humid coastal flat and an owner in a frosty tableland town should not receive the same shopping list. This guide therefore repeats climate and tenure more often than it repeats adjectives. Your Home’s climate notes and NatHERS climate files exist because Australia is not one weather. Council waste pages exist because Australia is not one contract. Plumbing and health rules exist because reuse is not one hose.
If you want a number — a rebate, a litre claim, a star target for a new home — take it from the agency that has to stand behind it. DCCEEW’s residential-buildings page is explicit about NCC 2022 thermal settings for new homes and about states adopting on their own clocks. Your Home is explicit about WELS flow ranges for showers. We cite those and stop.
A closing procedure
Write the next action on paper. Name the official URL. Name the person who will do it. Name the licensed trade if a wall, a gas line, a wet area or a switchboard is involved. Then close this tab.
The matching hub on this site stays the short map. The contact form stays the correction path. The footer disclaimer stays the legal mood: general information, not professional advice, and no invented partnership with the trademarks we cite.