More and more people are asking for powerful kitchen range hoods or bathroom exhaust fans. The logic appears simple, increase the power of the exhaust fan and get rid of pollutants quicker. In more and more modern homes which have been weather-stripped and sealed against cold air leaks and heat l...
Putting a sink in an island in the middle of the kitchen presents some plumbing challenges. Generally the venting for a sink goes upward in the wall while the drain water flows downward towards the floor – but in an island, going up is not an option.
To have a large sink that drains properly y...
The national building code requires a minimum level of insulation in a basement that reaches about two feet below the outside grade level. The objective is to make this storage space a heatable space. Hence some materials and techniques have developed that satisfy this minimum code requirement th...
One of our viewers is about to insulate his basement and he has been told that he should not run the vapour barrier all the way to the floor. Fact or fiction?
You should run the vapour barrier wherever there is insulation to keep the moisture on the warm side of the wall. And in a basement insta...
The basic message to remember is that Radon is a dangerous cancer causing gas and if found to exist in high concentrations in your house the problem can be solved permenantly and at a reasonable cost. So we don't want to ignore the possibility, we need to test every house in Canada.
7% of homes...
In my experience, heating ducts that run through attics cause serious problems in snow country. Don't let a contractor talk you into it.
In warm climates it is common practice to run heating and air conditioning ducting through attic spaces simply because it is easy to do. Unfortunately this ...
Il n’y a pas beaucoup d’information en français sur ce site, mai comme j’ai produit les vidéos sur le radon dans les deux langues, j’ai voulu les partager avec mes visiteurs qui sont plus confortable dans la langue de Molière. Cliquez ici pour visionner les vidéos techniques pour le travail sur ...
Decks need to be built strong enough to not fall down or have deck boards break for lack of support. In addition, although they do not need to be as solid as a floor in the house, they should not bounce like a trampoline. The structures of most decks in Canada are built with pressure treated wood...
I don't really have an answer to the question, but I can help you to understand what they mean.
We could find no plumber, nor plumbing manufacturer who could actually tell us the origin of the plumbing code for rubber washers. My guess is that it probably had something to do with the inside diam...
Often furnace heating and air conditioning duct work is run though an attic and then back down into the house. Personally I think that this is a really bad idea unless there is absolutely no alternative route. Why?
First, most duct work is not sealed where it goes through the ceiling, so a lot o...
