radon-basements / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

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...

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...

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...

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, ...

  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...

It is a very wise idea to have the air of your home checked for high levels of radon gas. Health Canada has identified exposure to radon gas as the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking, estimated to be the cause of 16% of diagnosed cases in the country. A high reading may come, not from having a uranium so...

How to Install a Radon Barrier - Slab Floors If in the kind of area where it's a good idea to install a vapor barrier against radon ingress, (check out the Radon maps by state and province page to find out here) we can't stress enough how important it is to test for radon, or better still to continually monitor for hig...

Radon gas maps - levels by State or Province Radon maps show where the risk of radon contamination in homes is the highest, But finding the local risk level on a radon map is not a clear indication of safe or dangerous levels of radon gas in a home. For example, below are official maps of the high-risk radon gas areas ...

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...

Radon Gas in Crawlspaces & Basements - why is it a problem? Radon gas was not high on the radar of builders and home owners over the last few decades, but as it is the second leading cause of lung cancer (after smoking) in the USA & Canada, it is quickly becoming a household term. Many newer homes will have rad...

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) ...