Phyllis from Regina, Saskatchewan wrote: "We live in a house that was built in the early 60's. The furnace has a vent that runs to the outside. I suspect this is bringing in fresh air. Is there a problem in closing off the vent for the winter? I think that the furnace would run more efficient...
John from Mississauga, Ontario writes: "I would like to open up a wall between my kitchen and dining room, but there is a cold air return in the way. Is there an easy way to re-route the cold air return so I can still open up this wall?"Actually this could be a non-problem. In the drawing I sho...
Last year we shot a special Spring Clean-Up show and in that show we cleaned up some mould on the lower walls of one of our viewer's basement. Recently we went back to permanently solve that problem by installing an exhaust fan that would draw the cold moist air off of the basement floor, doing ...
If your clothes dryer takes a long time to dry, or overheats and turns itself off, you may have too much lint in the exhaust duct. It is sometimes possible to locate special duct brushes for clothes dryer ducts, but you can make your own with a kitchen cleaning brush. Locate the type that has n...
There are times when each of us has to do a little work outside of our own specialty. We usually know how to get by in someone else?s trade but we often don?t have the specialized tools that make things go so much easier. Sheet metal work is one of those area that I do only when I have too,...
Ray from Woodstock, Ontario writes:For 20 years we had no ice problems on the roof. Heating was radiant heating in the ceiling. Then we installed a forced air furnace. The contractor ran all the ducts through the attic and we have had terrible ice dams ever since. The contractor refused to...
Paul from Ajax, Ontario writes:Two years ago I had a ceiling ventilator fan with lights installed in the bathroom. During a very cold spell, water was dripping from the reflector into the bath tub. It has a 4" aluminum flexible pipe connected from the discharge opening into the attic straigh...
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 ...
If it is a plastic flexible duct, it can be very difficult to clean precisely because it is so flexible. But all ducts can be cleaned with "duct brushes". These are round brushes similar to chimney sweep brushes but much softer, with either a string pull or a rod on the handle. If you can't fi...
Annia asked about getting rid of some mould in her basement bathroom. I have often discussed mould and mould clean-up and in every case I point out that you must have an exhaust fan in the bathroom. So today I thought I would talk about just how you get the exhaust fan duct through the base...
