renovating / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

...renovating. It may well be that you cannot move in on the date you initially planned. Allow yourself a buffer period beyond the slated completion date so you aren’t stressed about having nowhere to live if you house sells or lease is up before your new home is ready. Before moving in, we recommend that the main living ...

...renovating or remodeling is a great way of improving a home's walls thermal performance and reducing energy use while reducing heating bills, carbon footprint and improving a building's comfort level. It may look easy to go buy some packs of rigid insulation panels down at the local hardware store and screw them to you...

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...

...renovating an old home © Ecohome Cinderblock, stone or cracked concrete foundation renovations: Before renovating or insulating, determine first that foundations can safely continue to support a structure long into the future. A foundation that isn’t badly deteriorated can be upgraded to modern standards of moisture a...

...Renovating an existing structure can help preserve resources and reduce waste associated with new construction. Cons of buying a home to renovate: Time and effort: Renovating a fixer-upper can be a time-consuming and labor-intensive process and I'm going to say it always takes much longer than you ever anticipate! Un...

Construction is a dirty business, and living in a home under renovation can aggravate asthma and other respiratory illnesses, it can also lead to issues developing that people didn't suffer from before. Air that is full of dust and chemicals can cause respiratory irritations even among adults who don't suffer from such...

...renovating and when to repair them How much insulation does a basement need? Best Energy Saving Tips for Green Homes - 10 Tips Energy audits help identify easy home energy efficient upgrades that can save money. What is home energy modelling? Home energy modeling is conducted prior to building to anticipate future...

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...

Top Tips for preparing a home for winter Extremely low temperatures over winter can test your home in many ways, and sometimes your house will return a failing grade. Even brand new homes built to code can see failures of their building envelopes, windows, doors and ventilation systems during winter, a simple failure t...

Ice dams form at the bottom of roofs, letting water penetrate and cause damage to the interior of walls and roofs.  When snow melts on a roof it runs down until it meets the unheated bottom edge of a roof and then freezes. This chunk of ice is called an ice dam, and it can cause water to backup beneath shingles and Ice...

Frost in Attics: why is there Ice in my roof?  When a warm sunny day arrives after a long cold stretch and it seems like you have a roof leak when there isn't a cloud in the sky, it's probably Attic Icing, otherwise known as Ice Dams or Ice Damming, and the surprising thing is that it's very unlikely that the roof cove...