A bolt of lightning has 10,000 times the power of the electric chair. You don't want to get hit by lightning. For your house, its a numbers game. If there are a lot of houses around you, you probably won't get hit by lightning, especially if there are taller buildings and trees around that would ...
WHY SURGE PROTECTION?
Today's homes and offices are full of electronics. Appliances, TV's, VCR's, fax machines, computers, etc. Most electronics today use some type of microprocessor device. These devices are vulnerable to fast moving high energy disturbances known as 'surges'. For instance a li...
Lime was the primary ingredient in most stains in the old days -- it was called a 'lime wash'. It can be used to stain all porous materials including masonry, concrete, and stucco without causing any of the moisture problems that modern finishes may cause.
Given the need to use traditional mater...
When clean, electronic air filters are the most efficient furnace filters on the market - according to research at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. When dirty, they don't filter much at all. When in-between they can give off ozone.
If you're a lazy homeowner, they probably won't do m...
Roxul International is a company that makes all kinds of commercial and residential insulation for energy conservation, sound reduction and fire control out of molten rocks. They call it rock wool. They have two plants in Canada serving all of North America.
Roxul is one of those companies that'...
The key to efficient heating with a wood stove is not just having an air tight stove, but controlling completely the burn, even re-burning the gasses after they come off of the logs. It is easier to understand if we look inside an energy efficient stove. Check out this 3-D animation.
Back in the early 1980's there existed some fairly simple tables to guide homeowners in determining the insulation levels that they might want to put into the various parts of their houses. We had tables for standard houses, for energy efficient houses, super insulated houses and even for trying ...
When we are building new structures, we need to think about avoiding future rot problems. When we are renovating or repairing existing structures we are often faced with dealing with existing rot problems.
In new construction we need to understand that all wood preservative systems are not equal...
Whenever you cut into a piece of pressure treated wood, you should treat the cut end with a chemical called End Cut Treatment. This insures the full anti-rot protection of the piece of wood as it came from the factory.
Maximum preservative value will be obtained by applying end cut treatment lib...
I went to the store and bought a box of really nifty 100 percent recycled vinyl interlocking floor tiles, the kind that stand up above a concrete floor and let the water drain through and under. I needed them to keep boxes off of a basement floor where there was occasional moisture -- and I ended...
