Sheila writes from Ottawa : Hi there. I will try to make this as easy as I can however, it may not be.I purchased a brand new home from a very reputable builder in 1999 and took possession in December of that same year. December led into January and towards the end of January I began to experienc...
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 ...
Ice Dams are a serious problem throughout Canada, although it varies from year to year as to which region gets hit. Here we visited one of the solution companies who work to seal up the primary cause of ice dams, the warm air leaks into the attic. For more background on the problem check out th...
Sol, from Sudbury, Ontario, has terrible ice dams, as you can see in the photo. They are directly over his bay window. Take a good look at the house design. The bay window comes right out to the edge of the roof, preventing any possibility of any ventilation up over this area. In addition, be...
Bonnie from Briar Lake, B.C. has a metal door that goes into her garage and it is constantly freezing shut with a little accumulation of ice. What to do? The easiest solution is to put some form of plastic, slippery tape on at least one side of the door or the frame where it freezes. We found ...
Any time you use epoxy glue, resin or putty, you risk wasting whatever you don't use in time before it sets up. The larger the mass of mix that you have, the faster it will set because heat will speed up the hardening and the chemical reaction generates heat and when you have a lump of any epoxy...
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...
To get some adhesion on the top of ice you can of course use sand, but cat litter and fireplace ashes work as well.Of the commercial de-icers, the finer power like ones will tend to go down slowly and do better at thinning the ice. The more rock style will cut their way down to the bottom quic...
Ray from Woodstock, Ontario writes:For 20 years we had no ice problems on the roof. Heating was radiant heating in the ceiling. Then we installed a forced air furnace. The contractor ran all the ducts through the attic and we have had terrible ice dams ever since. The contractor refused to...
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...
