If you remember back to grade school, the water cycle had all kinds of science terms like evaporation and precipitation. Perhaps you remember that dew or frost on grass in the morning is caused by a different sciency-word: condensation. Condensation can signal a couple things. It’s often present when something very cold and something hot
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Did you know that your eaves trough should be cleaned every spring and fall? It’s true! In Calgary, we have trees shedding their leaves in the fall and more than a few gales during the summer and winter months. This can lead to branches, leaves, and all kinds of other things in your eaves trough.
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Mould is a fungus. It belongs to the same kingdom of living things that yeast and mushrooms (arguably the best recognized fungi) inhabit. Though the study of fungi or mycology is often considered a branch of botany (the study of plants), moulds and fungi are more closely related to animals than plants. Humans use a
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In the 11th century, monks at the Enkleistra St. Neophytos monastery in Cyprus added white asbestos to the plaster behind their religious paintings, presumably to enhance the colour of the red paint they used, and this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to asbestos history. People have recognized the remarkable properties
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Some people think that if mould appears on the walls of their house the simple solution is to attack it with bleach mixed with water and that will take care of the problem. While doing that might kill surface mould, it doesn’t deal with the reason why mould is growing in the first place and
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If you live in a home that was built in the last 10 or 20 years you don’t need to be concerned that it might contain asbestos. However, if you own home that was built prior to the 1990’s, there’s a very good possibility that it contains asbestos in some of the materials used in
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We hear a lot about the dangers of asbestos in our homes and asbestos abatement is a billion dollar industry. While we focus mainly on the negative aspects of asbestos, it’s still a fascinating material. Here are ten interesting facts about asbestos that you might not have known about. The word asbestos is derived from
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We’re all familiar with the common places to find asbestos, like flooring, insulation, and popcorn ceilings, but asbestos can sometimes be found in shocking locations. “Many victims of mesothelioma are exposed to asbestos in uncommon ways.” Says Cappolino Dodd Krebs LLP. in an article that goes on to list some of the strangest places to
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That’s a difficult question to answer and every person’s tolerance to mould is different. Some people will be thrown into a panic by a bit of mildew around the edges of a bathroom window that’s prone to condensation. Still others wouldn’t think twice about a bit of mould growing on the walls of a damp
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It’s an unfortunate legacy of our times, but these days a lot of rental homes are being used as marijuana grow ops. In fact, it’s estimated that one in four homes in some parts of Canada were used for a grow op at some time in their history. When a house is turned into a
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