Renovation / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

When buildings are decommissioned there can be a lot of valuable materials that could be used again, but when buyers can’t find sellers, otherwise usable materials are being sent to a land fill. There is a growing amount of used building materials that can be found at online classified websites such as Craigslist and K...

...renovation, but accurately determining the structural integrity of a foundation and supporting walls is not something most people are qualified to do. So don’t get too far into the decision-making process without first consulting an engineer or experienced construction professional you trust to see if home renovation i...

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...

Are low flow shower heads worth it? So, let's start with this somewhat shocking reality -  North Americans will on average use over 1.4 million litres of water per year, or about 4 to 5 times that of most European citizens. This is according to the SDWF (Safe Drinking Water Foundation). That makes Canada and the US the...

...renovations. Find out all you need to know about how to carry out successful renovations in the Ecohome Building Guide and these pages here:  Tips for staying on budget during renovations Choosing safe paints to protect indoor air quality Non-toxic natural finishing oil for wood that protect indoor air quality ...

It is a very wise idea to have the air of your home checked for high levels of radon gas. Health Canada has identified exposure to radon gas as the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking, estimated to be the cause of 16% of diagnosed cases in the country. A high reading may come, not from having a uranium so...

...renovations Buying a house to renovate and flip for profit? Here's what you need to know to succeed And sign up here for a free Ecohome Membership and reap all the benefits!  

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...

...renovations  in the pages below and in the Ecohome Green Building Guide:  Is cork a good flooring material? See our cork floor installation video here Durable and healthy eco friendly flooring options for green homes Marmoleum floors instead of linoleum durable, sustainable and healthy How to sand and refinish ...