Olive Taylor from Calgary, Alberta opened her home to our cameras and then amazed us with her self engineered improvements to her furnace humidifier.She didn't like the idea of stale water just sitting in the bottom of that drum type humidifier so first she scrapped the cheap float valve for a be...
Pham from Hamilton asked why he sees air returns on the ceiling sometimes and on the floor in other houses, and what effect this placement has on air quality in the house.If you are in the far north, or in the Southern US, the answer is simple. In an air conditioning climate the return duct goes...
We all know copper piping, both rigid and flexible. We have talked in this database about the very reliable quality PEX (Cross Linked Polyethylene) piping that is now being used for both hot and cold water installations, as well as for in-floor radiant heating. So what is Pex-Al-Pex piping?This...
Cory from Regina, Saskatchewan is finishing their basement and wants to know if they should have cold air returns in the basement.Hot air heating systems function best if there is at least one cold air return on each floor of the house. Essentially, that allows the warm air to circulate better. ...
Automatic set back thermostats will drop the house temperature during the night and bring it back up before you get out of bed in the morning, saving you significant heating dollars. But do they work with radiant heat?The answer is yes and no -- don't you love that?If your radiant heat is a very...
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...
Mario from Vancouver, B.C. writes: "I want to make a cabinet in the wall of the bathroom and the best area is between the vent stack and the furnace exhaust. They are separated by a piece of drywall inside the wall. Can I remove the drywall in order to make more space?"Mario sent a photo of a h...
One woman in Toronto removed an old hot water radiator that was under a counter and can't find anything small enough to take it's place.We went digging and came up with two that would fit. Myson is a company from Colchester, Vermont that makes hot water d?cor radiators from 6 inches to 79 inches...
Shawn from Nepean, Ontario writes: "My mother wants to replace all of her baseboard heaters but has been told that all new heaters are 220v and her home has only 110v. My question to you Jon is how can I tell for sure if Mom's home is 110v and if so, what can we do to replace her baseboard heate...
Debbie from North Bay, Ontario has electric heaters sunk right into her floor. Very few people even know that these things exist, but if you have a baseboard heated house you know how hard it is to get heat in front of a patio door or some other place that needs heat but there seems no way to ge...
