Paul in Calgary, Alberta has a partially finished basement and wants to complete the job now, but he has one stud covered with black stuff. Is this mould? Is this serious?It is probably mould and it is probably serious. Put a little laundry bleach on it. If it changes colour, it is most li...
Mary from Kingston, Ontario writes:I would like to build a small cold room but the space that can be allotted to this is only approximately 42 in. wide by 48 in. deep. Is this feasible? One of the walls will be an outside, north-facing cement block wall, the others will abut on the interior....
The general rule is that a basement or crawl space should have at least 0.1 square meters of screened ventilation space for every 25 square meters of floor space (1 sq. ft. per 250 sq. ft.) -- that is if the floor is made of poured concrete or if a dirt floor has a ground cover. If the floor...
When fiberglass is pushed up into the space between the floor joists around the perimeter of the basement, condensation often builds up on the wood behind the fiberglass. This can be stopped by the addition of an air barrier -- as simple as Kraft paper or as complex as caulked polystyrene. In p...
Although many insulating materials are fire resistant, most of the plastic-type foam products, be they injected as foam or installed in rigid sheets are flammable and must be covered with fire protective materials when they are inside the house exposed to a living space. 12 mm (1/2 in.) drywall ...
Isolating parts of the house located underground from the heat of the house can cause freezing and shifting under certain conditions. Wing walls, carport posts, and the like are common frost heaving or ad-freezing candidates because these structural parts of the house are far away from the heat ...
I love the story that Harold Orr of the National Research Council tells about basements. Years ago, a farmer went into his field, dug a hole and prayed to God that it would fill up with water for his cows. He called it a watering hole. Then a housing developer bought the farm, dug a hole o...
A basement is subject to three strong pressures.Settling is caused by the weight of the house pushing down on the footings and further compacting the soil underneath. This causes no great problem if everything settles together. However, settling can cause foundation and upper wall cracks whe...
There are four special temperature considerations in the basement.The air temperature in the basement is not always the same as that in the rest of the house. In a house with exterior basement insulation, the massive foundation wall is warm and slows down temperature changes (hotter or colder...
There are two basic mechanisms which can cause a basement to move because of freezing temperatures -- ice-block formation and ad-freezing.Frost heaving: a form of ice-block formation occurs when moist soil lies under the foundation footings and the frost line or freezing-point penetration reac...
