Found 42 results for the keyword(s) ‘Air Sealing’

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  Wind protecting houses in Newfoundland.

  Newfoundland is known for its brutal winds, all year round. So I thought there would be no better place in Canada to take a look at what to you do to a house to avoid wind damage, and keep that wind out of the house. I called on my old buddy Gary Reardon, a prominent new home builder in St. Jo...
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  Mysterious tracks in an attic.

  Dennis in Calgary, Alberta convinced me to come visit his attic which he was about to add ventilation to, but he had never been up in the attic.This was a very interesting attic, and an interesting home. The cellulose insulation was matted down a bit and had a very strange grid pattern in the to...
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  Can I insulate my electric in-the-floor heater?

  Debbie from North Bay, Ontario has electric heaters sunk right into her floor. Very few people even know that these things exist, but if you have a baseboard heated house you know how hard it is to get heat in front of a patio door or some other place that needs heat but there seems no way to ge...
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  What to do about rotten 2x6's in a basement concrete floor?

  Martin went to renovate his basement and discovered that he had rotten out 2x6's right in his concrete basement floor. He thought that they simply left the forms for the footing in place when they poured the floor slab. This sounded a bit strange so I sent him the first graphic above that shows ...
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  Should you caulk window trim?

  Rob wrote in saying that he had an Energy Audit done on his house and as part of the energy tune-up, they caulked his window trim down to the wall. Yet he thinks this was a wasted effort because he put the trim on himself and it was just decorative.In most window installations, the trim actually...
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  Cold drafts through a new Patio Door that won't go away.

  Hugh from Vancouver wrote: Our patio door was single glazed and the cold came through it like there was no door there at all. We installed inside storms several years ago and the improvement was like night and day.A couple of years ago, we saw at a local mall show displays of their double g...
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  Aluminum tape to seal window frames

  Terry has heard that if you want to stop drafts, you need to take the trim off from around the inside of windows and seal that gap between the drywall and the window frame behind the trim. He suggests simply covering this gap with aluminum duct tape.That is a great idea Terry. Aluminum duct tap...
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  ATTICS

  Air leaks account for the greatest loss of heating dollars from Canadian homes. These are easily solved by sealing. The greatest conductive heat losses occur through the basement. Canadian basements typically lose more heat than ceilings because attics usually have a little insulation (eve...
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  CONFLICT: USE OR DON'T USE BLOWN-IN LOOSE FILL INSULATION INSIDE HOLLOW WALLS.

  Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) does not recommend the use of any blown-in insulating material inside "enclosed vertical cavities" (that's a fancy way of saying "walls that are not open"). They feel that techniques of installation and verification during installation are not good ...
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  WHY DO I HAVE FROST IN THE ATTIC?

  Frost in the attic is no different than anywhere else. It is caused by warm moist air coming into contact with cold surfaces and dropping its moisture. The problem in attics is primarily one of quantity; in one house frost accumulations of up to fifteen hundred pounds were discovered one co...