When two apartments share the same heat source and only have one thermometer, someone is always unhappy. If the thermostat is upstairs, the downstairs people are too cold, and if the thermostat is downstairs, the upsatirs people have to open the windows, to keep from getting cooked although thos...
I am always amazed at house construction where so often things are half built or more while people are running around beginning to think about "extras" that should never be though of as "extras" but as part of the essential system. So time for one of my lectures -- (you asked for it).Heating is o...
Gregory in Grand Pre, Nova Scotia has a hot sun room while the rest of the house is relying on the furnace. How can he use the heat from the sun room in the rest of the house?You have to move the hot air around.You can buy "through the wall" fans that are actually made for moving heat from a woo...
Air conditioning is often difficult to install into an existing house that uses radiant heating simply because it requires a lot of large air ducting.Space Pak from Mestek Canada in Toronto is a system that uses ducts small enough to slide into existing 2x4 hollow walls. There is a basic air con...
You cannot use a dimmer switch on a fan motor, but you can find fan speed controllers.Why? A regular dimmer switch simply reduces the voltage. That works with lights, but will burn out a motor (and maybe burn down the house).A fan speed controller is a much more complex electronic device that re...
Harry caught our cameras in a renovation centre and asked the simple question: "How many pneumatic tools can I run off of a single compressor at the same time?"Technically the answer is simple, in reality much more complex.Every compressor has a rating on it stating that it can give a constant ma...
Alan in Ottawa, Ontario is complaining about the air conditioning going all the time because the thermostat seems to be reacting to the kitchen heat, and the upper and lower floors of his house do not have an even temperature at all.Two problems here. First the thermostat should not be near any ...
Have you ever wondered how much air actually comes out of your hot air floor registers, or how many cubic feet per minute your bathroom fan actually exhausts? Well the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has developed a simple tool that will give you a good approximation.They call it the Gar...
Many years ago there were some heating systems, particularly in the Prairies, that had the heating ducts on the ceiling in the centre of the house and the cold air returns under the windows. When we blew a lot of hot air into our houses, this worked fairly well, on the premise of pulling the col...
Vapour Barriers should go on the "Warm in Winter" side of the insulation so that they can stop all the moisture in the air from going through the wall, but stop it where it is still warm and there will be no condensation. The problem is that a lot of air, and a lot of moisture can go through ele...
