Connect to your favourite weather forecaster and look for the following conditions:
Category: Sealants (Caulking) Product: Thermoplastic Caulking / Sealant
Temperature Limitations: Above -30 C (-22 F) and below +40 C (104 F) -- keep product above +5 C (+40 F)
Rain Limitations: Dry befor...
Connect to your favourite weather forecaster and look for the following conditions:
Category: Concrete Product: Crystalline growth waterproofing products
Temperature Limitations: Use above +2 C (+35 F) and below +21 C (+70 F)
Rain Limitations: No rain until material is firm -- about 2 ...
Here is one water proofing material that approaches the field of Science Fiction -- but it is for real and it does work.
Xypex High'n Dry is a not so commonly available brand name of what is generically referred to as Crystalline Growth waterproofing products. These are applied to a sound bare c...
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...
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...
I have reproduced below an article from the construction professional publication Solplan Review November 2008 because it was such a good article on this complicated subject. In 2023, Solplan Review is no longer in publication. For an animation on what is a rainscreen, follow this link.
But...
In 1990 I produced a video for NRCan (National Resources Canada) specifically targeted to grade school children to improve the energy efficiency of the family home. If things look a bit weird in the video it is because the camera was always at the height of the eyes of a grade school kid – you s...