Paint like coatings have been around for a long time claiming to extend the life of your roof for years. Until the late 90's they actually didn't do much more than camouflage a dying leaking roof -- the problem being that things move up there from full sunlight to cold nights, from hot summers t...
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia is home to a peculiar house with a concrete roof. The roof is now leaking and Ron would like to know how to seal it.Many good coatings are available, but all of them will eventually need maintaining and may even develop leaks from weathering -- as has happened with the pre...
There is a lot of debate about whether to put a vapour retarder (vapour barrier) on an insulated wall behind shower tiles. The code has not historically been specifically clear on this so we get lots of different interpretations. What the code does say clearly is that we should not have two vap...
Sealants, caulking and other confusing vocabularyThere are all kinds of "sealants" used in construction.What we normally call a "caulking" is properly called a sealant -- a thick material that cures to a flexible solid designed to "seal" the space between two materials -- particularly two materia...
Letter: I have a ceramic shower, that is leaking, I do not know how it was built or what is underneath.In the last week +- have noticed about an ounce or 2 of water in the garage,I have a small openeing in the ceiling directly under due to the drain pipe, the drain pipe and feed lines are dry. Bu...
Ed writes from Ajax, Ontario : All 3 walls of my bathroom shower stall are finished with 4" ceramic tiles and are in good shape. When I had to remove one of them, I discovered that the drywall was behind it was so wet that I had to put a fan on it over night to dry it out before I could glue...
Any wood product will expand when it gets wet, some worse than others. Today we have a wide variety of wood or wood like flooring products.Massive HardwoodFirst you should understand that even massive hardwood, if allowed to stay wet or overly humid for too long will swell up and potentially buc...
No flooring company recommends any kind of wooden floor in a bathroom, and even fewer (fewer than no?) who would recommend it in a basement bathroom where you might not only have water constantly spilling from the top but maybe moisture coming up from the floor.You want to do it anyway? OK, here...
"Waterproofing" is an expensive and touchy process, because "waterproofing" means making it absolutely leak proof. In fact we rarely waterproof a basement, we generally "Damp proof" it. This means that we make it water resistant.Damp proofing is best done on the outside with specific bitumen...
Dan from Fort Erie, Ontario wrote: I purchased a retirement home here just over an year ago and have noticed that the angel stone facing on the front of the house is breaking off. The house is about 40 years old and I suspect the angel stone is original. It appears that water is getting into ...
