Andy caught our camera in a store and asked about the proper preparation for a flagstone walkway.I always joke that patios and walkways are for the Southern US and decks are for the Northern US and Canada, simply because dealing with water and ice always complicates anything we try to do down on ...
David in Victoria B.C. has a rather large rock problem. The house was built into a rocky hillside in 1912, and rather than remove the rock, the original builder simply built on top of it. That totally used up one corner of the basement, that David would now like to turn into an apartment for hi...
Marian from Baltimore Ontario has a big hole in her foundation wall where a steel 'I' beam was removed, as you can see in the photo she sent us. Her contractor filled it in with mortar and bricks. She would rather fill it with concrete.So we set up a block of concrete with a similar hole, and c...
Judy has a pretty messy basement wall and has had several expensive estimates for fixing it.It almost looks like a mould or a fungus growing out of it, starting at a definite line quite high up on the wall.When I looked through the window I could see that the white stuff was starting about a foot...
I don't often answer all the details of a long letter, especially not with the time constraints that we have on television. But Larry from Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia wrote such a coherent detailed letter about the 80 years old very cold home that he just bought that I thought I would just wade in...
Brian from Cornwall, Ontario just bought a house and when it rains heavily, it flows in the basement. Someone recommended that he dig a trench inside the basement to drain the water away.First of all, see if simply landscaping sloping away from the house, and rain gutters and downspouts away fro...
Most of us have houses on flat land or gentle slopes. Just how do you build those foundations that are hanging onto almost vertical clifts, like overlooking the harbour in St. John's, Newfoundland?We went out and visited my builder friend Aiden Duff to look at one bueatiful house where he drille...
Tom from Thomasburg, Ontario writes: "I'm thinking about buying a house, however the basement has low ceilings. Is it possible to bust out the cement floor instead of jacking up the house?"Yes you can dig down, but you need to be aware of just how the soil under the house supports the house. Al...
Insulated Concrete Forms, or ICF construction, is a growing and viable way to build houses. Initially sold just to make insulated foundations, whole homes are now being built out of concrete because of these techniques. ICF actually stands for the whole field of pouring concrete into forms ...
You know that I don't believe in trying to keep a basement dry by simply patching all the cracks in a wall. First I want to remove as much of the water as possible from the other side with rain gutters on the roof, downspouts running far away from the house and the landscaping slopped away fr...
