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Found 89 results for the keyword ‘Alternative’

  • Toilet innovations that work

    Every few years I need to update this "innovations" entry as things just keep getting better.  Not all "gadgets" to save water work, and not all toilets actually flush clean.  For details on the comparative performance of low flow toilets that do work, check out the MaP rating system, which is be...
  • Working with bamboo

      BAMBOO FLOORING -- LOOSING FAVOUR Bamboo flooring is beautiful and reasonably durable -- but it is falling out of favour.  Ecologically bamboo is a sustainable resource as it is a very fast growing grass, so bamboo production on a piece of land is far more profitable than growing trees on th...
  • HEAT PUMPS - OVERVIEW

    Heat pumps do not create heat. They simply pump it from one place to another, either raising the temperature or lowering it in the process. It's much like a water pump: that doesn't create water, it just move it to wherever you need it. Heat pumps are valuable because it takes less energy to move...
  • Healing techniques for eyes and hands

    Meir Schneider runs a School for Self Healing in San Francisco and several years ago I had the occasion to take a seminar from Meir on therapy massage. I asked him to come onto my HGTV show to give us a few tips on how to improve things that prevent us from working around our own houses as we get...
  • Will Larch replace pressure treated wood?

    revised November 2004 Viewers are constantly asking me if there are alternatives to using pressure treated wood. In 2004 the wood treating companies 'voluntarily' withdrew the standard CCA pressure treated wood from the residential market. Ecological groups had lobbied long and hard to ban this...
  • Pressure Treated Wood - the new generation

    Have we really moved to a new generation of Pressure Treated Wood? With the introduction of MicroPro treated wood to the Canadian market in the spring of 2013, some are saying that we have a game change in exteriour wood and building decks.  It has taken several years to get this technology adap...
  • KEBONY wood -- the softwood turned to hardwood

    Îpe is a beautiful hardwood from Brazil’s Amazon forest that is popular as a premium decking material.  There are social, moral and sustainable reasons why you should not buy Îpe.  Click here to read the Green Peace documentation of the tragedy of this beautiful wood: “Blood Stained Timber – Rura...
  • Back Pain and Home Improvements

      Back Pain and arthritis are probably the two primary health problems that cause people to give up manual trades and even renovating or repairing their own homes.  Back pain in particular can step in while people are quite young.  It doesn't have to be so.    I have always had a peculiar pro...
  • Speciality Ladders

    Aren’t we all tempted by all the speciality ladders we see?  Two of the ladders below I showed on my TV show a long time ago.  Checking out these ladders sent me on quite a study of ladders, and updating this article over the years shows how some things die and get reborn.  Ladders sold for home...
  • Softening water -- do electronic water softeners work?

    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...