First, decide whether you want your crawl space heated, warm, or cold. (search keyword "crawl space" for the title "BASEMENT: HEATED SPACE, WARMED SPACE, OR COLD SPACE?")Insulating under the floor is usually done by first stapling a plastic vapour barrier to the underside of the floor. This ...
I always loved this idea -- heat the floor and distribute warm air throughout the ground floor at the same time. It is a practice that is legal under certain limited conditions, but the problem is that it dries out the wood in the floor space so much that, when a high-temperature furnace is ...
Joan insulated her basement using dense insulation made for steel doors, then discovered moisture behind the vapour barrier and is worrying if it is the insulation that is causing the problem.No Joan, there can be lots of reasons for moisture in a basement wall, and even the researchers are tr...
Adrienne from Nelson, B.C. wants to build a full sub-floor in her basement, but has a problem with the door that leads to the outdoor steps. "Is there an alternative to reframing the doors or removing and recutting them?"Not that I am aware of, if that floor is to be several inches higher. ...
Many years ago, because of the prairie enforcement of the gas code provision that you had to supply fresh air to a furnace, an inventor in Alberta began marketing the Hoyme damper. This is a motorized damper that closes off that combustion air duct from the outdoors that dumps cold air into ...
Dale asks about hardwood floors over concrete.If the concrete floor is above grade, like is common in a new condo, no problem.If the concrete is in a basement, below grade, then you have potential serious moisture problems, and hardwood really doesn't like excessive moisture.Generally it is not r...
An earthen crawl space or basement is a terrible source of humidity. The ground under the house, given most soil conditions, will continually feed water up to the surface -- where it will evaporate up into the house. Here vapour diffusion is important because there is nothing stopping this ...
Insulating hot water lines that run through a heated basement or crawl space sounds logical, but in fact it will same you little or no money. The infrequency of their use lets them cool off whether they are insulated or not, and the heat is converted to useful room heat anyway.
The exception is ...
A basement that has more than 50 per cent of its height sticking out of the ground is not really a basement. The walls should be treated as ordinary, above-ground walls. The foundations should be treated as slab-on-grade to avoid frost problems.
Interior/exterior insulation combinations can be u...
Draw air off the floor, not off the ceiling
The basement is different than the rest of the house because the floor is colder, attracting more moisture, and the cold air falls and is trapped on the floor as well. So the first step is to plan for the exhaust fan to draw the air off the floor of th...
