Proper insulation for the Chicagoland area?

[PeterD]

Mine are aluminum on the outside of wood double hung windows. The 'typical' setup...

[ATJaguarX]

I have vinyl single hung windows

[PeterD]

Many of the vinyl windows I've seen will accept these storm windows. Again, checking with the manufacturer may be useful--they probaly have experience with this type of problem.

[TKM]

Any truth to this statement?

I believe so. I had the HVAC designer size the furnace (gas fired, hot air) just that way when we built a house in northern Ohio some five years ago. The comfort level has been fine on the coldest days. We set the temperature to 50F when we're away on trips and it takes several hours upon return to reach the normal 68F. That's a bit inconvenient; but our fuel bills compared to several neighbors are significantly less for similar sized houses.

TKM "A properly-sized system is designed as closely as possible to the needs of the house; on the coldest days of the year, it should run almost continuously."

[TKM]

It seems like my furnace is on for 10 mins, off for 10 mins... all the time. I have adjusted the "cycles per hour" in my programmable thermostat. I believe, it was set to 5 or 6. It seemed like the furnace was constantly cycling when the thermostat wasn't even dropping a degree. I would have my thermostat set to 68 and every time it cycled on, the thermostat would read 68. I don't think i've ever seen the temperature on my thermostat ever drop. I thought this was excessive and I dropped the cycles per hour to 3 or 4 (can't remember).

In my opinion, I am having way too much heat loss if my furnace is running more then it's off.

Well, it provides some indication; but I don't find that furnace running time is the best indicator of heat loss since, no matter what the house construction is, running time seems more directly a function of outside temperature.

Why don't you get some thermal images of your house. It's a fast and simple process. Some utilities will do the work or at least recommend someone. The images will show exactly where heat is being lost and indicate about how much. You can then focus on sealing or fixing those areas first. There's an example at:

TKM

TKM

[ATJaguarX]

I had the builder come out today and he had this little gun that shot a lazer beam onto surfaces and it would read the temperature of the surface. What a handy little tool. With the thermostat set at 68/69 degrees, the walls were reading around 63-65 degrees. The heat coming out of the vents varied per room (depending on how much the dampers were open), but average between 88 and 102 degrees.

My house size is 3200 sqft. My furnace is a York furnace, 80% effeciency at 117,000 BTUs. Some people were asking about the BTUs of the furnace.