Jeff in Ottawa, Ontario wanted to put a toilet in his basement but was worried about the slope required from the toilet exit to the floor drain. He was even looking at an expensive toilet pump.One easy solution for basement toilets is often overlooked. Drilling through a concrete floor is never...
When a driveway slopes down into the house, you need to intercept any and all water flow and carry it away before it gets to the garage. If you don't do this, you will find the concrete pad in the driveway getting into moisture and frost problems, the door freezing to the floor, and the like.You...
Carpet or tile adhesive can seem almost impossible to remove from a concrete or wooden floor, especially when it has been there for a long time. If you try sanding, it will heat up and clog up the sandpaper. If you wire brush it with a wire wheel on your drill, again if you let it heat up, it w...
Radiant Heating and Convection Heating are the two primary types of ways we heat our houses. FORCED AIR HEATINGConvection heating means moving hot air -- what we usually call a forced air heating system simply heats air and moves it around the house through a system of fans and ducts. Forced air...
Most of you are aware that metal connectors are often used to hold things together in a house, much more than in the good old days. The most common one that most people can see in relatively new basements, even decks, is the joist hanger you see in the second photo. Rather than having to sit th...
If a 6x6 or 4x4 wants to twist, it will do so and you can do little to stop it. However you can decide which end will twist!Buried pillarsIf you bury the 6x6 into a concrete pillar, the bottom will be fixed and the top will move, perhaps before you get around to locking in the rest of the deck f...
Fastening to concrete or masonry? We've got three problems: choosing the right fastener, choosing the right tool and then doing it right. Here is some product information and trouble shooting tips.Power Actuated nailingExplosive shot nailling is the most common but the weakest of the serious ...
Often we need to mix things around the house and don't always have the best tools for the job. In this TV segment I showed two inexpensive tools that really help in this category.The Odd Job, available at many renovation centres, is a small barrel that was originally made for mixing small batche...
Marian from Baltimore Ontario has a big hole in her foundation wall where a steel 'I' beam was removed, as you can see in the photo she sent us. Her contractor filled it in with mortar and bricks. She would rather fill it with concrete.So we set up a block of concrete with a similar hole, and c...
On this TV segment we focused on testing if water based cleaners worked better than solvent based cleaners on concrete stones.When done thoroughly, they didn't make much difference. What does make a difference is waiting long enough for the chemical to work, and scrubbing or rinsing before it dr...
