recycled-drywall / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

How to Choose Eco-Friendly Drywall: There is a lot more to choosing drywall than one might think, and as it finds its way into pretty much every building made, a lot of resources are used in the process and noses irritated. In the LEED Platinum certified Edelweiss House, we used CGC Sheetrock® Brand Ultralight gypsum ...

Wood ceilings - what's the the skinny? Ahhh, the charm of a wood ceiling, seriously, what's not to like? The intent of this page is less about talking you out of installing gypsum board (drywall), and more about giving you a little encouragement if you are hesitantly considering a wood ceiling. It’s a natural product t...

DIY drywall repairs are an easy home improvement that pretty much anyone can handle. Cracks and dents in drywall are cosmetic only, so if you completely screw up a drywall repair job, the only real problem would be a fresh dent in your ego. The most common damage to drywall consists of dents, minor cracks and popped na...

They might be parked a little more precisely than an auto wrecking yard, but that doesn’t mean they will ever fly again. Decommissioned aircraft have been declared so, because they have reached the end of their safe flying days. While most of us might be fine riding in rusty old cars, few of us would climb into a rusty...

All materials will have a history, the pros and cons of which will need to be weighed. Unfortunately there isn’t always an obvious right or wrong answer as to whether or not something is a sustainable material. The design of your home, where you live and your lifestyle are all factors that determine what the most ecolo...

The cost of every item we purchase is determined in part by the price of oil. This includes products that are in no way petroleum based, since material extraction, manufacturing and transportation will in one way or another, rely at least in part on oil. As the price of oil continues to rise, the money saved by employi...

Though we all diligently cart our plastic to the curb for recycling, the sad reality is that only about 7% of it is commercially viable for recycling, the rest ends up as landfill. Plastic is a petroleum product that until now has been very inconsistent and unstable when returned to an oil form. Recently a North Americ...

b sq. Design Studio Inc. is a Toronto based landscape design and build firm that endeavours to create elegant and modern landscapes with a focus on sustainability and longevity for their work. “Plug and Play – the Pallet Garden” is their 5th feature garden installation for the annual Canada Blooms Garden Festival. ...

Walls in residential homes are almost exclusively finished using gypsum board (either recycled or synthetic) because it is cheap and easy. It is however, not the only option for interior walls, and it has some other competition - especially in areas that may get humidity. We will start with drywall, but also list off a...

Approximately 100 times more water vapor is carried into our walls by air leakage than is carried by vapor diffusion. That makes air barriers 100 times more important than vapour barriers, so why is no one talking about them? We don't talk about air barriers because we are too busy talking about vapor barriers. An air ...

The best way to reduce waste is to plan ahead to keep it at a minimum; here are some suggestions on how you can do that: Design your house with reduced waste in mind by keeping the plans at sensible dimensions. If you plan lengths to be 4 and 8 foot increments instead of 5 and 9, this makes the best use of industry st...