When you have a new home built for you, just before you take possession, you will spend a couple of hours walking around the house with the builder and a notebook. This is a critically important part of buying a home because this is where you check for all the errors and omissions. If you do th...
Hello Jon,
I have a cathedral ceiling with a shingled roof. If I insulate the roof air tight, will the shingles lift and curl as they do on poorly ventilated roofs?
The other thought is leaving an 1 1/2 inch space between the roof deck and the insulation and installing a ridge vent, which give...
Should you have a contract or not for every renovation? According to David Foster, author of the pamphlet Get It In Writing, except for the simplest of maintenance tasks, you need a contract, and for a lot of reasons that you may have never thought of.
If you would like to read the other two par...
This was the first part of a special three part series designed to give you some insights to the business side of renovation because hiring a contractor and getting the job done right is a business deal. In this segment we tried to give you an idea of the advantages and disadvantages of each diff...
Unless you have a great personal reference to a contractor, you will probably have to use the Yellow Pages, or an association list and start calling. Here are the kinds of questions to ask during that first contact on the phone. The objective here is to narrow the field to two or three contractor...
BP and IKO have had problems with some organic base (felt) asphalt impregnated shingles. There are class action suits against them in both the US and Canada.
The advice from my roofing specialist:
"Whoever claims they have a legitimate complaint against BP or IKO should go at it alone and not j...
Îpe is a beautiful hardwood from Brazil’s Amazon forest that is popular as a premium decking material. There are social, moral and sustainable reasons why you should not buy Îpe. Click here to read the Green Peace documentation of the tragedy of this beautiful wood: “Blood Stained Timber – Rura...
Earnie from Vancouver wants to know how can you predict the failure of your hot water tank before it fails.
That is not an easy one Earnie. There are many signs that will indicate that you need to change the tank or at least do some maintenance work to keep it running, whether it is an electric ...
Although it is possible to purchase real wood doors or have them custom made, more and more kitchens have one form or another of plasticized doors, generally made of MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard, compressed wood fibres) and covered with various plastics, acrylics or polymers.
Plastics were fi...
I have reproduced below an article from the construction professional publication Solplan Review November 2008 because it was such a good article on this complicated subject. In 2023, Solplan Review is no longer in publication. For an animation on what is a rainscreen, follow this link.
But...
