sheathing-permeability / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

OSB v Plywood - Which is Best? Odds are, that if you pass a housing development of wood-framed houses, it will have OSB (oriented strand board) as exterior sheathing. When you count sub-floors, roofs and wall sheathing, OSB claims about 70% of the wood sheathing market in North America over plywood. Both products have ...

The first house designed under our Passive Solar Index (PSI) program won "Most Resilient House" in the 2013 Green Builder® Home of the Year Awards. The Kenogami House is a living laboratory of high performance design and technology, called "The Most Resilient House in North America" by Alex Wilson, founder of the Resil...

There has been a steady evolution in the way we build homes over the last couple of decades, and the old standby wall recipe of 2x6s, fiberglass insulation and polyethylene doesn't measure up anymore with building codes, nor the trend towards high performance housing. One aspect of wall assemblies that is garnering som...

Similar to electric baseboards, hydronic heating systems facilitate zone heating as you can keep different rooms at different temperatures. Though different from electric resistance heating, hydronic systems are ultimately still using electricity to generate heat, so all the same environmental realities apply. Heating ...

Is Electric Heating Eco-friendly? Determining whether or not electricity is an efficient and ecologically responsible means to heat a home should include the initial electricity production as well. Burning fossil fuels to fire electric power generation is only around 30-60% efficient. There is also significant loss fro...

There has been an increase in the use of wood and other biomass fuel for heating homes across the colder parts of North America & Canada for the last decade. In Eastern Canada and the USA in particular this trend was largely triggered by one storm in 1998. There was a noticeable spike in woodstove sales in 1999 thr...

Solar energy Our future truly depends on us continuing to develop and implement renewable energy systems. In Canada, Ontario is at the forefront of that movement by offering strong financial incentives for homeowners to produce their own energy. Some of the other provinces seem to be lagging behind, offering artificial...

Electric heating is the best option in Quebec. The downside? Hydro-Québec struggles to meet demand during peak hours. Bi-energy heating systems address this problem by using another energy source, which unfortunately is often a fossil fuel. To reduce GHGs and meet environmental targets, fossil fuels must be eliminated ...

Having a backup heat source that can operate without electricity should be an important consideration for many homeowners in colder climate zones, especially those who rely on a heat pump or electricity as their primary source of heat. In this guide, we will explore the various factors that can influence the need for a...

There are a few things that will cause any furnace to either stop running, or only deliver cold air, so here are a few easy DIY furnace repair tips that may get you warmed up without having to call an HVAC professional. It is at least a place to start, so you aren’t paying someone to come tell you that your thermostat ...

Noisy baseboard heaters -yeah, it's a thing... Over the years we’ve had many questions about ticking, humming, popping or even banging or clicking noises coming from electric baseboard heaters or hot water heated baseboard heaters. The main complaint is that they are loud enough to wake people up – or subtle enough to ...