Found 87 results for the keyword(s) ‘Windows’

• Article

  A home made stand-off for a tall ladder.

  Al from Vernon, BC nails a 2x4 to the top of his extension ladder to be able to span across windows. We made a version of this setup that would work for any long ladder -- a 2x4 on the wall side, a shorter 2x4 on the other side, and two carriage bolts with wing nuts to sandwich it onto the top o...
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  How do you get curtain rods to hold in drywall?

  Roland wants to know how to get curtain rods to hold better in drywall.A screw driven directly into drywall will not hold at all, unless it is driven into wood behind the drywall. If the wall is hollow where you want to drive the screw you must use some kind of drywall fastener or fastener syste...
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  CAN I HAVE TOO MANY WINDOWS FACING THE SUN?

  Yes. Too many windows facing south in an ordinary house can cause over heating. A window area on the south side of not more than 6 per cent of the total floor space of your house (counting a heated basement) should cause no problems. More than that and you have created half a solar house -...
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  I'VE SEALED THE WINDOW AND THERE'S STILL A DRAFT. WHY?

  The space between the finished and rough frame of the window (hidden behind the window trim) is a major source of heat loss and hidden moisture damage inside walls. The trim should be sealed or removed and the gap filled and sealed if this was not done at the time of construction. Just stuffing...
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  HOW CAN I ELIMINATE AIR LEAKS THROUGH WINDOWS?

  Air leaks through the moving parts of windows accounts for as much as 14 per cent of the heat loss in a typical Canadian house. Picking the right kind of windows can certainly help:-- Fixed windows with no moving parts can be completely sealed. -- Fixed window panes with small moveable section...
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  HOW DO WINDOWS ACT AS A HUMIDITY ALARM?

  Much of this book has been concerned with controlling humidity in the house. A double-glazed window is a perfect alarm system to warn us of dangerous humidity conditions. A double-glazed window has just enough thermal insulation to allow comfort in the house without producing condensation on th...
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  CAN EXISTING WINDOWS BE USED FOR PASSIVE SOLAR HEATING?

  Yes, if they face in the right direction and are properly exposed to the winter sun and shaded from the summer sun. See the section on solar energy in the overview "Insulation & House As A System" that can be found in the Nuts & Bolts section of the web site.
• Article

  WINDOWS

  No matter how you cut it -- a good window is still a lousy wall. Glass has almost no thermal resistance (RSI - 0.16; R - 0.88), and a single-pane window in Canada not only makes a lousy wall in winter, but it makes a lousy window too -- you can't see through the thick layer of ice! But a ho...
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  INSULATING WALLS

  A respectable rewinterizing job need not include the addition of insulation into the walls. They are the most difficult (and expensive) parts of the house to re-insulate, and usually have the poorest financial payback of all re-winterizing tasks because:-- Walls are finished on both sides, and i...
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  CAN I KEEP FROST OFF MY WINDOWS?

  In Canada, other than on the lower mainland of British Columbia and on Sable Island, it is impossible to maintain a comfortable level of humidity in the house and not have frost on single-pane windows most of the winter.Using two panes of glass allows the inner pane to be warmer than the outer on...