While at a home show in Calgary, Marsha asked me to save her from her husband Martin. Actually marriage counselling is as much a part of my business as "divorce dust" is a part of renovation.Martin was doing a wonderful job of building Marsha a professional sewing centre above his new garage/wor...
Therisa Timan from Pittmetals B.C. wants to know what to do with her old paint cans. How do you handle paint waste responsibly?If you dump solvent wastes like paint and paint thinners down the street drains, they usually go straight into the lake or rivers. If you dump it down the household dra...
Hazardous waste is anything that can cause ecological problems if it is either put down the drain or sent to a regular landfill site. The five primary categories are:EXPLOSIVE -- the most common household product in this category are aerosol cans that if heated or crushed could explode and cause...
Brad Gates from AAA Wildlife in Toronto talked about the hazards wild animals can present to the health of your home and yourself and he showed how he traps or exits the animals.One critical and poorly known health item is that Raccoon feces often contains worms that can be fatal to humans! T...
NEW CONSTRUCTION
In the interests of health and safety a number of trades are controlled by law, most particularly plumbing and electricity. The degree to which plumbing and electrical work are actually regulated varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. For instance almost all work performed in...
Yes Wendy, just as you can paint over any other painted walls.
You can paint with an oil based paint directly over the lead based paint (which will certainly be an oil based paint).
If you want to use a latex over it, then you must first use a "super adherent primer", made by most of the paint ...
More and more people are asking for powerful kitchen range hoods or bathroom exhaust fans. The logic appears simple, increase the power of the exhaust fan and get rid of pollutants quicker. In more and more modern homes which have been weather-stripped and sealed against cold air leaks and heat l...
(See non-toxic cleaners in the last paragraph, and Do Rust Cleaners Work?)
RUST ON RUGS
There has always been one basic chemical available for getting rust off about anything and that was Oxalic Acid. That was the active ingredient in the old petroleum jelly that we used to clean the rust off o...
The basic message to remember is that Radon is a dangerous cancer causing gas and if found to exist in high concentrations in your house the problem can be solved permenantly and at a reasonable cost. So we don't want to ignore the possibility, we need to test every house in Canada.
7% of homes...
In the spring of 2004, a young and dynamic company in Quebec got a new radiant heating cable out of the laboratory and onto the market that has almost no electromagnetic radiation. "FlexTherm" from Longueuil, Quebec came out with what they call their Green Cable.
With a sensitive professional...
