Gary from Thunder Bay, Ontario, wants to dig a relatively small storage space under his cottage, through the crawl space, although he plans to make it about 8 feet deep, and wants to know just how to insulate it to keep the contents from freezing.Aside from putting about 4 inches of foam insulati...
Joe and Joan from St. Thomas Ontario wrote: "Our kitchen has a 2 foot crawl space underneath. We hired a contractor to insulate the floor with pink insulation. He used plastic to hold it up. The kitchen was still not warm enough so we nailed up Styrofoam over the plastic. The following year ...
Harold in New Brunswick has a problem with moisture and mould. He has a bungalow with a 2 foot crawl space. There is no insulation in the floor and no vapour barrier under the floor. He asks if installing insulation between the floor joists prevent moisture in the house?No. Most insulation wi...
Joe from Beaverton, Ontario has discovered that he has rot in his floor joists. All the black wood you see in this photo is rotting wood that Joe discovered when he pulled out the existing fiberglass. In places he can poke a knife two inches into the floor joists!He has a crawl space with a ...
When pipes go from a cottage down through the crawl space and into the ground, they risk freezing. Simply wrapping them in insulation will not protect them, especially if the wind manages to blow though the fiberglass.Dig down about a foot where the pipes go into the ground. Remove the insulati...
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...
Insulating pipes that run through cold areas is necessary to keep them from freezing; even then you have to run the water occasionally or add some heat. You could leave the tap running a little during the very cold spells; that's how Grandpa kept them from freezing. You can also get thermostat ...
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...
