Insulating hot water lines that run through a heated basement or crawl space sounds logical, but in fact it will same you little or no money. The infrequency of their use lets them cool off whether they are insulated or not, and the heat is converted to useful room heat anyway.
The exception is ...
Connect to your favourite weather forecaster and look for the following conditions:
Category: Adhesives Product: ABS & PVC Pipe Cement
Temperature Limitations: Above +4 C (+40 F) and below + 38 C (+100 F)
Rain Limitations: Work on dry pipe and keep dry for 15 minutes.
Wind Limitati...
When mysterious problems arise in a house the task is to track down the cause – and sometimes encapsulate it.
I built a beautiful new tiled shower, only to discover a hole starting to develop in one tile a few months later! When I inspected carefully, there was nothing that touched the ...
Frost Protected Shallow Foundations
The foundation for a house is generally poured below the soil grade level so that the footing itself is well below the frost depth for any given region and soil type. This protects the house from frost heaving caused by expanding soils beneath the foundation....
Dan from Toronto, Ontario writes: "I saw your show about installing the Moen Positemp shower system. We had two installed, one upstairs and one in our basement shower. Both work fine for controlling the "shock" factor, but we can't seem to get enough hot water out of the upstairs one. Is there a ...
Several viewers are complaining about low water pressure in old houses. Old steel pipe tends to collect corrosion and calcium on the walls, enough to slowly choke off the flow of water. A look at the graphic shows what happens to water flow compared to a clean new 1/2 inch pipe. When it becomes r...
INSPECT, MAINTAIN OR INSTALL BACKFLOW DAMPERS UNDER THE BASEMENT FLOOR BEFORE DOING ANY RENOVATION WORK IN A BASEMENT.
Installing a backflow valve between you and the city requires cutting into the concrete floor. With our changing weather, this valve is almost always necssary and generally cod...
Michael writes from St. Lazare, Quebec : We recently found a nasty surprise with our new house. The land has a high water table and as a result we have sump pump in the basement. The plumbing for this pump was hidden in the walls and ceiling of the basement. When our inspector inspected the home,...
Simon from Surrey, BC has an absolutely flat backyard and the kids have to wear boots just to walk across the grass.
If it is perfectly flat you will have to do some landscaping, although not too much. In fact you could pull back the grass and simply put some soil under the grass to change th...
Putting a sink in an island in the middle of the kitchen presents some plumbing challenges. Generally the venting for a sink goes upward in the wall while the drain water flows downward towards the floor – but in an island, going up is not an option.
To have a large sink that drains properly y...
