install-wood-siding / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

Siding installation The walls of your home are an environmental separator. Their job is to keep the inside in and the outside out. Exterior cladding or siding is your first line of defense against weather elements, and its job is to allow interior control layers (ie. the building envelope) to do their jobs without bei...

What is Shou sugi ban siding? © Resawn Timber Co. Shou sugi ban is an ancient Japanese carbonized wood finish created by burning the surface of wood to preserve it. The final product is also known as Yakisugi (yaki means to cook/burn and sugi is the Japanese name for cedar), but shou-sugi-ban seems to have won as the...

Siding is important! There is no stage of home construction that you should rush through, but if there were, it shouldn't be siding. Whatever type of siding product you choose, purchase and installation is not cheap, so you don't want to do it again anytime soon. Your siding needs to protect your home from the weather,...

Sanding and Refinishing a hardwood floor, when is the best time to do it? It may seem weird to say, but the best time to refinish a hardwood floor is before it shows severe signs of wear and tear. Hardwood floors and hardwood laminated or engineered floors are durable and can withstand a lot of traffic, but over time, ...

A technical guide to understanding the role weather barriers and rainscreens play in a wall, choosing the right products and installation tips for optimum performance. They're officially known as water-resistive barriers or WRBs, sometimes weather-resistive barriers, but in practical terms they are more commonly called...

Finding sustainable wood: We live in a country with over 400 million hectares of forest, so the supply is there; it's simply a case of properly managing it. That also means that when we cut one down, we should plant another. Wood is a renewable material, requires little processing and can almost always be purchased loc...

This is the fourth piece in a blog series written by Craig Anderson as he documents the design and construction of an off-grid LEED Gold passively-heated home. See post 1 of the off-grid homes blog here, the overview . or post 2 in the off-grid homes blog here covering design and construction choices. or here see post ...

Windows, Replace or Repair? We often get asked if it is a good idea to replace old windows with new and better performing windows to save money. Usually to the surprise and relief of homeowners we most often tell them to stick with the ones they've got. Not to say that the idea of replacing windows is always 'green was...

The importance of installing doors and windows correctly: Window and door openings are breaches in a building envelope that need to be carefully managed in order to prevent moisture damage and air leakage in homes as well as to save energy. Water leaks from around windows and doors are the visible result of a poor inst...

Framing lumber choices for building homes Framing lumber, also known as structural wood, is the grade of wood used for house framing (studs, Larsen Trusses for Double-Stud walls, headers, roof trusses and floor joists, etc. as well as in timber frame construction). Its technical characteristics make it perfectly suitab...

Livos is a Quebec manufacturer of natural wood finishing oils, and they are very transparent about the composition of their products which are mainly plants and some other natural materials. There are also no heavy metals used in the colouring pigments, so it is a completely sustainably-made and healthy product.  "In o...