In Canada, other than on the lower mainland of British Columbia and on Sable Island, it is impossible to maintain a comfortable level of humidity in the house and not have frost on single-pane windows most of the winter.Using two panes of glass allows the inner pane to be warmer than the outer on...
Ventilation in a Canadian attic does very little to remove moisture when the temperature in the attic is below freezing. During that time, the moisture is in the form of Ice and the passing air simply won't remove it -- whether you have passive vents or power vents. When things warm up, if the ...
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...
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...
Martin from Moncton, New Brunswick has frost forming on the ceiling of a closet in an unheated bedroom.First, you need to realise that heated or not heated, that bedroom has just as much moisture in it as the rest of the house, perhaps more because moisture tends to migrate from warm to cold area...
Dennis in Calgary, Alberta convinced me to come visit his attic which he was about to add ventilation to, but he had never been up in the attic.This was a very interesting attic, and an interesting home. The cellulose insulation was matted down a bit and had a very strange grid pattern in the to...
Kevin from frosty Regina, Saskatchewan writes: "I had a new steel door installed this summer. When the temperature outside drops below -15 c, frost develops on the bottom of the interior casing. Is this due to a lack of insulation behind the casing? Also the bottom of the exterior threshold a...
Lawrence in Toronto Ontario is wondering if his attic hatch might be letting moisture leak into the attic.Definitely! This hatch should be treated as an outside door and it needs to be weather-stripped and latched down tight. It is usually a very easy job by simply applying some of the adhesive...
Most people think that the purpose of attic ventilation is to remove moisture from the attic. That may be true in the spring, but the rest of the Canadian year it does other things.In the summer it generally reduces the temperature of the attic, reducing the need for or the cost of air condition...
Frost in the attic is no different than anywhere else. It is caused by warm moist air coming into contact with cold surfaces and dropping its moisture. The problem in attics is primarily one of quantity; in one house frost accumulations of up to fifteen hundred pounds were discovered one co...
