I'm asked a lot about covering a floor in a basement. There are several considerations we need to deal with: the hard and cold concrete and maybe with levelling the floor. Of course we need to pay attention to water, either coming from outside the house or from plumbing spills inside the house si...
For years we have talked about protecting the sill plate of basement walls from moisture rising up from the concrete. This could be water in the concrete from plumbing spills, or even from under the slab from a high-water table. The old standard ways to protect that bottom piece of wood on t...
From top to bottom:
1- Check the spark arrestor or rain cover, whichever you have on your chimney. Its most important function may in fact be to keep animals and birds out of your chimney.
2- The liner needs to be in good shape. Check the part that is visible from above, and occasionally have a...
Do I need to place a vapour barrier against the brick wall, then insulation and then another vapour barrier over that? The wall does not leak and is fully underground. Barbara
THE VAPOUR BARRIER
The vapour barrier is more properly called a vapour retarder. It is designed to stop moisture in t...
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 ...
Burn Smell in the shower
Bill from Newcastle, Ontario gets that smell in the morning and wants to know how to get rid of it. This is not a common problem, but it is certainly not unknown. It is not common because it requires a specific set of circumstances to create this problem.
First it re...
We got Bill from Washago, Ontario on the phone to talk about his desire to stop the water from going through his deck onto his Lawnboy. He was thinking about putting some kind of water proof membrane over the joists under the deck boards.
The problem with this is that there is not enough of a sl...
Jim from London, Ontario is wondering what temperature he should leave his thermostat while he migrates south for the winter. The short answer is 55 degrees F, or about 12 degrees C.
That should keep the pipes from freezing, keep the humidity under control, keep the furniture from going through ...
THE RAIN GUTTER’S PRIMARY JOB
We need rain gutters to collect the rain that falls on a roof and then take it far away from the foundation of the house. That, together with landscaping that slopes away from the house, can solve 80% of all water leakage problems in basements, especially dur...
Here is one that I answered one year , and found a better answer a year later.
GETTING THE HEATER CLOSER TO THE FAUCET
In 2003 a viewer asked me about how to get hot water to that back bedroom because they have to run the water for two or three minutes before the hot water arrives from the b...