wood-flooring / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

The floors you choose really create the atmosphere in your home and give it its identity. The first considerations should be to choose a durable and non-toxic floor to ensure safe indoor air quality (IAQ). When you are making choices, find out the estimated lifespan and what maintenance is required to keep it in good c...

As a kid growing up along the Gatineau River in Quebec, watching tugboats pulling log booms down the river was commonplace, and logs that got loose were a great source of entertainment and exploration. Any that were big enough to hold a bunch of kids for log rolling competitions were highly coveted. There were legitima...

Natural building products such as hemp flooring are gaining in popularity for those who want healthy homes with sustainable eco-friendly building materials. Hemp is a very sustainable crop given the quick growing time and the amount of carbon sequestered in hemp building products. A hemp crop goes from seed to ready-to...

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, ...

Is Polyurethane floor seal non-toxic? In North America, polyurethane varnish is used almost exclusively as a wood floor finish, but the majority of them are high in VOC's which are detrimental to interior air quality and health. For this reason non-toxic wood floor finishing oils are gaining in popularity. There are a ...

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...

Cork flooring, pros & cons Cork is a renewable resource, harvested from trees without killing them. Although it comes from far away (mostly Portugal), its carbon footprint from transportation is quite reasonable given that it is light-weight and can be made very thin - so a lot packs into a shipping container. Cork...

Remember linoleum? Meet marmoleum! Remember linoleum, that durable but boring material found on most kitchen and bathroom floors of older homes? These days, its called marmoleum and it comes in bright colors and faux finishes. Whatever name you call it, it’s generally considered both the greenest and healthiest floor c...

We have finished the bathroom counter, floors and shower stalls with a dark slate tile from Glendyne. Slate is a natural stone, so its surfaces have more character and inconsistencies in texture - and at times in thickness - than manufactured tiles. This can mean a bit more effort on the part of installers, but a more ...

Prefab Home kits are ideal for Passive House or LEED certified homes Écohabitation the French language Quebec affiliates of EcoHome, in conjunction with experienced Architects & Kit home manufacturers, have launched a series of stylish & affordable prefabricated sustainable green kit homes that are able to meet...

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...