There is a wide and confusing choice, and no one material will do for every job. The questions to ask are: What will it stick to? Can I paint it? How long will it last? You won't be saving money if you have to replace the material often; some caulking materials will harden and crack after on...
The space between the finished and rough frame of the window (hidden behind the window trim) is a major source of heat loss and hidden moisture damage inside walls. The trim should be sealed or removed and the gap filled and sealed if this was not done at the time of construction. Just stuffing...
A respectable rewinterizing job need not include the addition of insulation into the walls. They are the most difficult (and expensive) parts of the house to re-insulate, and usually have the poorest financial payback of all re-winterizing tasks because:-- Walls are finished on both sides, and i...
Paint like coatings have been around for a long time claiming to extend the life of your roof for years. Until the late 90's they actually didn't do much more than camouflage a dying leaking roof -- the problem being that things move up there from full sunlight to cold nights, from hot summers t...
Sealants, caulking and other confusing vocabularyThere are all kinds of "sealants" used in construction.What we normally call a "caulking" is properly called a sealant -- a thick material that cures to a flexible solid designed to "seal" the space between two materials -- particularly two materia...
-- Take care of air barriers, ventilation and vapour barriers before insulating. Check out these three topics in the Search Tab above.-- Don't block the eave vents with insulation.-- Do cover the top of the outside wall.-- Don't put plastic foam on top of porous insulations (batts, loose fill) a...
First, the fancy way: infrared photography can identify temperature changes on different parts of the house, and thus heat losses. With proper interpretation of the photograph you can know which heat losses are caused by air leaks and which by missing or soaked insulation. This is like an X-ra...
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 ...
Some caulking guns do have some nifty new details on some of them, like a knife for cutting off the tip of the cartridge or wires to poke holes in the tubes.I don't know why, but the wires are often not long enough to do the job if you cut just a little bit off of the tip. Bad planning. (Years la...
JR in Nova Scotia has a crack between the slab of his garage floor and the foundation of the house, through which bugs are crawling in. How to seal it.The crack was probably caused by normal shrinkage of the slab after it was poured. The best way to seal the joint with the wall is with something ...
