Ralph from Red Deer Alberta sees the shadows of every 2x4 and every nail on the inside of the house not long after painting. I don't think he really wanted to hear that we call this "ghosting".\012\012Actually it is caused by thermal bridging; cold following the studs through the insulation and ...
Peggy is moving from Calgary to Vancouver and in her new province she says she can't locate the SuperSpacer windows that she loved in Calgary. That brings up the whole question of what are different window spacers, and why some are available in some areas of the country and not others.Thermal pa...
One viewer has sent in his tip that he can "see" the studs on his wall for hanging pictures by just holding a lamp close to the wall.It sounds fishy but it does work on some wall but not on others.It will not work on freshly painted, or well insulated walls.Actually he is not really seeing the st...
Wood is not as good an insulation material as is any of the products we call thermal insulation: fiberglass, Styrofoam etc. Yet up to 24% of our walls are wood all the way through. Metal framing is even less resistant to heat loss than is wood. Typically the insulation is placed in-between the...
Russ in Bomanville Ontario sent us in a video which showed a steel beam right across the center of his garage ceiling. The beam supports the brick on the bedroom wall above. He wants to insulate the ceiling to make a workshop, but leave the beam exposed so he can use it to lift heavy things...
Mould at the wall to ceiling joint, particularly in a cool bedroom or a closet, may not indicate water leakage at all from above. It can be a very cold part of the wall simply collecting moisture from the air in the house. This kind of condensation can easily feed mould growth.One solution is t...
Lorraine from Elliot Lake, Ontario has mould growing out from the joint between the wall and the ceiling in her bedroom. This is a common problem caused by the fact that most houses are built with two pieces of wood on the top of the wall called a ?double header?, with no insulation at this spot...
I receive a tremendous quantity of questions about mould, the housing sickness for the new century. First, it is important to understand, in nature, there are mould spores all around us and most of us are not bothered by or aware of them. It is massive accumulations of mould that can cause ...
There are several non-destructive ways that we can see what is going on inside the walls, ceilings and roofs of our homes. Simply watching the melting patterns of a light snow on the roof will tell you where you have insulation and where you have heat losses. In the first photo this was an unheat...
I have always said that as far as the cold getting into your house is concerned, a window is always the coldest part of a wall. But no longer. A company called Prelco from Riviere-du-loup, Quebec has produced a window called Prel-Therm that actually plugs into your electrical system. That's right...
