Roofing paper is not required by the building codes, although some do now require a plastic or rubber membrane on the lower overhang that extends up the roof to a point 18 inches inside the exterior wall. Although felt paper is not required on the rest of the roof, most shingle manufacturers do r...
Cindy from Ajax, Ontario writes: We have an L shaped house, and our roof is in need of re-shingling (we are considering asphalt shingles). Where the two roof slopes meet in the centre of the "L" there is a major valley, quite long, with steep pitch. This valley is currently an open valley...
Getting something to stick to asphalt or asphalt coated materials is a unique problem. Asphalt driveways have their own specific crack sealers and roofing materials generally use what we call "Plastic Cement". (One exception to this is a specially formulated polyurethane adhesive that will work...
Ventilation in a Canadian attic does very little to remove moisture when the temperature in the attic is below freezing. During that time, the moisture is in the form of Ice and the passing air simply won't remove it -- whether you have passive vents or power vents. When things warm up, if the ...
Gary from Hamilton, Ontario writes :I know that brick veneer homes have vent holes in the lower rows to allow air to equalize the pressure and help keep water out. We have just bought a 50 year old solid brick (two layers of brick) house. I notice there are no vent holes and it doesn't appear t...
Professional sheet metal workers can make long straight bends in sheet metal by the use of a machine called a 'break'. One part of the machine clamps down on the sheet while the second lifts the rest of the sheet up to some angle. A home made break can be as simple as a 2x4 clamped down over th...
We visited Anne's roof in a previous show where she had three different types of roofs, no flashings and inadequate transitions between each roof, and of course water buckets in the house. In fact one roof was only six years old, the centre part in good shape but the flashings letting in enough ...
Annie has three roofs on her house, a shingled roof in the front part followed by an asphalt and gravel flat roof and then an elastomeric membrane flat roof over her back porch. They all seem to leak. The asphalt roof is only six years old, installed by someone who advertised in the local paper...
A basement that has more than 50 per cent of its height sticking out of the ground is not really a basement. The walls should be treated as ordinary, above-ground walls. The foundations should be treated as slab-on-grade to avoid frost problems.
Interior/exterior insulation combinations can be u...
Welcome to the Eakes' Origami Guide to the Building Code -- or "how to actually build new flashing requirements in the building code".
Water leaking in around windows and doors represents one of our major construction problems. The building codes seem to be constantly changing in an effort to mi...
