basements-moldy-0 / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

That musty, moldy basement smell that we have come to accept as unavoidable, is actually quite avoidable. The solution is really quite simple - stop building below grade with walls that were designed for above grade and your basement won't smell like old gym socks and potentially make you ill with mold spores. As a fre...

The most common practices currently employed for finishing basement interiors as living space rarely account for the impacts that come with the added moisture load below grade, or the amount of heat that will be lost to the ground. Existing basements are typically under-insulated or not insulated at all, and if they ar...

Basements don't have to be moldy, that is the first thing to realize. It's easy to build a basement better, or to finish an existing basement correctly, we just need to realize that they behave differently than above grade walls and to build accordingly to effectively deal with the humidity found underground - and by d...

Crawlspace insulation - be careful to get it right A crawlspace comes with all the downsides of a basement, but it is just too low a space to be functional either beyond the folded plastic christmas tree and a couple of boxes of baubles. Unless there is a good reason for it, going through the process of pouring a footi...

Insulating below slab-on-grade foundations Why insulate under a slab on grade foundation? For comfort, and to save money, that's why! In many areas Building Code has fallen behind common sense on what specification of insulation to use under a slab, It is common to install as little as R5 insulation below slab floors, ...

Vapor Barrier + Air-Con = Damp Moldy Walls So here's a little known fact that most HVAC installers won't tell a potential new client for central air; Polyethylene vapor barriers in combination with air conditioning in homes can rot walls because of the condensation they may cause. This is why if you have a newer home w...

  Insulating a basement is a great idea if it wasn't insulated when built, as before we began insulating foundation walls and below slabs (see slab on grade), it was generally estimated that basement heat loss accounted for about 1/3 of the total heat loss of a house. It is likely that such an abysmal starting place ma...

I'm not the Mike Reynolds who invented the Earthship, I'm the Mike Reynolds who thinks Earthships in Canada and other cold climates are a bad idea. A coincidence of names; just putting that out there so The Garbage Warrior doesn't get hate mail that belongs to me.  Where did the Earthship come from? It first showed up ...

What is the difference between a slab on grade & a crawl space? A slab on grade, or ‘frost protected shallow foundation’ is exactly that, a slab of concrete on the ground. There’s more to it of course, but let’s start with a ‘win’ in the comprehension department shall we?  A slab on grade rests directly on the gro...

Polyisocyanurate (PIR), Extruded Polystyrene (XPS), Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) or Styrofoam? When building or renovating a high-performance building envelope there are really three main kinds of rigid foam panels you are going to have to choose from - Polyisocyanurate known as Polyiso (PIR), Extruded Polystyrene (XPS) ...

What is the difference between a slab on grade and a crawl space? A slab on grade, or ‘frost protected shallow foundation’ is exactly that, a slab of concrete on the ground. There’s more to it of course, but let’s start with a ‘win’ in the comprehension department shall we?  A slab on grade rests directly on the groun...