A quick look at cleaning downspouts showed that there are various ways to clean them and more interestingly, some ways to keep them clean. Most rain gutter guards fail to keep debris out of the gutter and out of the downspout. We showed one interesting set of products.The attachment between the...
George from Fort Frances, Ontario has a problem of snow melting off of his new addition. He is trying to pin down the problem because this causes ice formation on the edge of the roof.He had a ridge vent installed, but never checked to see if his soffit vents worked. A ridge vent, without goo...
We spent some time talking with Brian Rand of Custom Cupola and Steeple in Oakville, Ontario about the re-emergence of copper as a building material in residential finish work and decorative pieces. They can build about anything, inside or outside the house, in copper.Like the copper "onion dome...
Downspouts bring water down from the rain gutters but you must not let them just dump the water near the house, or you could have leakage problems in your basement. We showed two gadgets to help out.For downspouts that are fed directly into the foundation weeping tiles, the Easy-Clean system ...
Ice Dams are created when heat from the house gets into the attic and manages to melt the bottom of the snow pack. This melt water flows down to the edge of the roof where it is now freezing cold and you get ice dams or ice cycles. Ice dams back water up behind them and this finds it way under ...
Not true for all parts of Canada!In certain regions (most of the data is from the National Research Council in the Saskatoon area) it appears that the only effective way to stop continuous accumulation of frost in the attic is to not ventilate at all during the worst of winter, but to seal the...
Power vents and turbines are not a good idea in northern climate attics. (search keyword "attic" for the title " CONFUSION: POWER ATTIC VENTILATORS ARE NOT RECOMMENDED FOR WINTER USE. WHY?")That leaves gravity vents, vents that allow warm air in the attic to rise and escape out the top of t...
The main reason for not recommending power vents in the attic is that the attic is usually not well sealed, and the power vent, in sucking air out of the attic, creates a negative pressure in the attic. This negative pressure sucks warm air and humidity through the ceiling leaks into the att...
Yes. The attic absorbs a great deal of heat from the sun during the summer and becomes much hotter than the rest of the house. The better your attic is insulated, the less this heat build-up will affect the temperature of the house. Venting the attic replaces this heated attic air with air...
When we talk about insulating roofs we are usually dealing with situations in which there is no attic: either it doesn't exist or it has been converted into heated living space. So, we are talking about cathedral ceilings, flat, and basin-type roofs. Cathedral roofs are slanted and drain l...
