wood-siding-installation / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

Siding is important! There is no stage of home construction that you should rush through, but if there were, it shouldn't be siding. Whatever type of siding product you choose, purchase and installation is not cheap, so you don't want to do it again anytime soon. Your siding needs to protect your home from the weather,...

What is Shou sugi ban siding? © Resawn Timber Co. Shou sugi ban is an ancient Japanese carbonized wood finish created by burning the surface of wood to preserve it. The final product is also known as Yakisugi (yaki means to cook/burn and sugi is the Japanese name for cedar), but shou-sugi-ban seems to have won as the...

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, ...

Finding sustainable wood: We live in a country with over 400 million hectares of forest, so the supply is there; it's simply a case of properly managing it. That also means that when we cut one down, we should plant another. Wood is a renewable material, requires little processing and can almost always be purchased loc...

Siding installation The walls of your home are an environmental separator. Their job is to keep the inside in and the outside out. Exterior cladding or siding is your first line of defense against weather elements, and its job is to allow interior control layers (ie. the building envelope) to do their jobs without bei...

Commercial Green Roof Case Study AB Canada Nestled in the Oldman River valley in Lethbridge Alberta, the green roof on the Helen Schuler Nature Centre (HSNC) has been attracting local and international attention from visitors and living roof enthusiasts since its completion in 2013. On the roof of the building, a 200m2...

This is the fourth piece in a blog series written by Craig Anderson as he documents the design and construction of an off-grid LEED Gold passively-heated home. See post 1 of the off-grid homes blog here, the overview . or post 2 in the off-grid homes blog here covering design and construction choices. or here see post ...

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...

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...

Should we consider adding a bidet? Although quite popular in Africa, Asia and Europe, the bidet has been slow to gain popularity in America.  Could it be that we are just creatures of habit? Does the idea of a jet of water blasting your nether regions seem a hard leap to make at first? Well, you’re probably not the on...

There is some debate in performance building circles, particularly in the Passive House community as to whether or not you can add enough insulation below a concrete floor to eliminate the need for heating it. We have been on the fence about this and leaned to both sides at different times, but it seems we have now fa...