Scott from Elmwood Ontario wanted to know how to get insulation into the small space between the drywall and the roof in a renovated attic -- that slanted part of the ceiling above the knee wall -- and still leave space for ventilation.My trick is to put little or no insulation between the roof m...
Mould at the wall to ceiling joint, particularly in a cool bedroom or a closet, may not indicate water leakage at all from above. It can be a very cold part of the wall simply collecting moisture from the air in the house. This kind of condensation can easily feed mould growth.One solution is t...
Rob in London Ontario has one wall that is cold in the baby's room and he just wants to warm it up a bit. The easiest way to make a significant difference without major renovations is to put about 1 to 1-1/2 inch of Styrofoam right over the painted wall and cover that with more drywall. That ma...
Mary from Kingston, Ontario writes:I would like to build a small cold room but the space that can be allotted to this is only approximately 42 in. wide by 48 in. deep. Is this feasible? One of the walls will be an outside, north-facing cement block wall, the others will abut on the interior....
A common problem is found in B.C. when people pile lots of insulation into suspended ceilings below cold attics. Ventilating the space above the insulation to the outside can only be recommended if you have successfully made the suspended ceiling air-tight at the ceiling level. If anyone ha...
When fiberglass is pushed up into the space between the floor joists around the perimeter of the basement, condensation often builds up on the wood behind the fiberglass. This can be stopped by the addition of an air barrier -- as simple as Kraft paper or as complex as caulked polystyrene. In p...
Styrofoam (which is actually a Dow Chemical brand name of extruded polystyrene) is a fairly good vapour barrier. It will not cause problems in the Canadian climate if you put on at least 1-1/2 inch thick and preferably in 2 ft. x 8 ft sheets applied horizontally. This actually permits some ...
We can't stop heat from escaping from the house by conduction, but we can effectively slow it down with thermal insulation. In practical terms, just about the only insulating material we work with is dead air. All the fibers, foams, beads, and batts are just different ways to package dead a...
No insulating materials on the market in Canada today have asbestos fibers in them. Most of the scare a few years back about asbestos came from acoustic tiles, asbestos linings in ventilation ducts, and asbestos insulators in heating devices such as hair dryers. It was also discovered that ...
Although many insulating materials are fire resistant, most of the plastic-type foam products, be they injected as foam or installed in rigid sheets are flammable and must be covered with fire protective materials when they are inside the house exposed to a living space. 12 mm (1/2 in.) drywall ...
