Wind penetration solution, Wind Resistant Home

The north wind here is relentless. It is insidious, and bone chilling. The north wind blows,and you would swear you were out in the middle of the river, instead of inside the heated house.  Often I wonder, how did people live in this house when it was built? How did they survive. No central heat, no thermal windows, no insulation in the walls, you burned wood or coal to create heat. It took some consideration, but I finally came to the realization that the house was filled with several direct heat sources (the stacks and pipe accesses are throughout the house) and you kept yourself right next to the direct heat source.  Sitting next to a wood stove is a pretty comfortable spot. Toes are warm, fingers flex, and you can do some of  your household chores right there next to the heat source. Stitching, butter churning, cooking dinner, reading, can all be done right next to a heat source.

Previous owners have eliminated our option to return to those heat sources. The chimneys are not lined with firebrick, and some of them have been filled with the brick of the chimneys that previous owners chose not to repair. Instead of restoring the crumbling stacks they covered the stack with the roof and put the chimney debris inside of the stack. What a mess. What a disappointment. Something else has to be done to warm this place up. I'd be happy to go to a warmer climate for the winter, but Mr does not like that prospect so here we sit with a heat dilema and thousands of dollars in heat bills. I have churned my mind to search for solutions. I came up with a prospective solution, and I even ran it past the product manufacturer to see if my intended use was code compliant.  Their conclusion was that it is and that it is a good idea. It had not been proposed to them before, but they thought it would work to solve

tyvek comes on a roll
and requires a tyvek tape to cover seams

our problem.

My proposal to Mr is that we intall Tyvek under the floors of the first level of the house. Wind rips down that river and under the house. Houses here, including ours, were constructed on brick piers. The wind can blow right under and through the house. People use all sorts of solutions to stop this from happening.  The owners of this house installed brick walls in the openings under the house for just that purpose. The brick walls did not have much wind resistence. Tyvek is made for wind resistence so I thought it would be worth the investment to install it under our floor. Realizing that that installation would require going under the house, Mr. declined the proposal. A year later gross fuel oil bills have changed his mind. He took on the project and it has helped tremendously to cut down whe effects of the wind penetration on our ability to maintain heat levels. Tyvek covering the whole exterior of the place would make a difference, for sure. We would have to remove all the siding to do that...and that is a HUGE and expensive job. This is a case where you have to pick your poison...fixing it all is an impossible task. Tyvek under the floor has made a huge difference in our oil usage and our in house comfort. After the Tyvek job under the floor was completed,  our livingroom was able to reach the temperature set on the thermostat. Before the tyvek we could barely get it to reach set temperature, and it could rarely maintain that set temperature. At night we had the hallway upstairs set for 64, and when I read it at 2 am it read 49 degrees!  After the Tyvek installation it was 68, and even up to 72 degrees sometimes, when set for 64. Previous to installation the livingroom was set for 68 and rarely could reach that. After the Tyvek it maintained 68 constantly...or whatever temp we decided to use that day. The effect of the Tyvek has been amazing. I would recommend it to anyone.

I must add that we could put the Tyvek under the floors because the crawl space area is considered exterior space. Tyvek is only for exterior use. In this case it did the trick, and for us was a small miracle.