Albert Bacci of the Noble House Coatings company in Toronto came to the TV studio to share his experience in applying outdoor stains.
First rule, if there is mill glaze (that washer board look caused by the planing blades in the lumber mill) on the boards, you must sand them off or no stain will...
In Europe and Japan the value of negative ions and the need to generate them artificially within work buildings, houses and cars has been accepted for years. I find the case for negative ion effects strikingly similar to the evolution of North American thinking about acupuncture -- we can't compl...
A "negative Ion" is nothing more than a molecule of anything floating around with an extra electron riding along for free. Somebody once decided that the electrical charge of an electron was to be called negative -- so a molecule with an extra electron is called a "negative ion".
There are three...
* Modern environments, such as your well-sealed house, high-rise buildings and automobiles, have few if any negative ions in the atmosphere. The have all dumped their free-loading electrons on the metal ventilating ducts, synthetic drapes, synthetic rugs, and the metal shell of the car. Metal and...
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...
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...
This entry has been updated in 2013 and you may want to jump to the last paragraph to see the positive current state of Pressure Treated Wood.
Is pressure treated wood safe or not? Is the wood used to build my deck a few years ago now banned? There is a lot of confusion about pressure treated wo...
Tired or damaged hands from computer mouse use
Years ago I had a serious problem caused by overwork with a computer mouse dealing with very detailed graphics work for several days non-stop. My hand was going numb and losing its functions because of my “death grip” on that little mouse. The doct...
Underground tanks are banned
Many years ago we buried oil tanks in the ground. Think a minute about how bad an idea that was. When a very old tank developed a leak, we never knew about it and it just leaked oil into the ground for years, creating quite an environmental problem. That is why it is...
From top to bottom:
1- Check the spark arrestor or rain cover, whichever you have on your chimney. Its most important function may in fact be to keep animals and birds out of your chimney.
2- The liner needs to be in good shape. Check the part that is visible from above, and occasionally have a...
