More and more people are asking for powerful kitchen range hoods or bathroom exhaust fans. The logic appears simple, increase the power of the exhaust fan and get rid of pollutants quicker. In more and more modern homes which have been weather-stripped and sealed against cold air leaks and heat l...
A caller from Ontario has a leak that keep's coming in through the wall despite the efforts of two contractors.
It is often very difficult to find the place where water gets into the wall, when it is not something obvious like a crack in the caulking around a window. You need to make a careful i...
Yes you can check if your hygrometer or humidistat is giving you the right readings. Mix into a glass, one part water to two parts salt -- like 1/4 cup water to 1/2 cup salt. Mix it thoroughly. Now put this glass and the hygrometer into a sealed plastic bag at 22 degrees C, room temperature. Wait...
The basic message to remember is that Radon is a dangerous cancer causing gas and if found to exist in high concentrations in your house the problem can be solved permenantly and at a reasonable cost. So we don't want to ignore the possibility, we need to test every house in Canada.
7% of homes...
Note 2014 :
As you read below you will find a detailed history of Vermiculite insulation and problems it had starting in 1920. Just recently I have become aware of houses built around or before 1920, yes 100 year old houses, where it was discovered that there was about 2 inches of Vermiculite u...
Determining, definitively, whether a given paint was oil or latex has always been a bit of a problem, but an important one as you can paint oil over latex, but not latex over oil unless you use a special 'super adherent primer' first.
I used to recommend taking a bit of paint thinner on a clean ...
John from Halifax wrote in asking about replacing his salt based water softener with an electronic water softener to make it easier to water his lawn.
Note 2020: I originally wrote this article in 2004 and many products have come and gone since then. I recently received several requests to l...
Our camera caught up with Alfred at the renovation centre and he says that he has cracks in the concrete and in the plaster. What to do? (Be sure to read all the way to the end of the article to learn how to read a crack.)
The important first step is to determine which one of three possibilitie...
(This is a real good example of a living history. I wrote the first part of this entry in 2001. With a book you would have to wait for the next edition for developments. With a bulletin board you would have to read a lot of old entries. What I love about my web site is that I can change, adapt an...
