Heritage Home Tour

Met with Steve Mechem this evening, who owns a heritage home in the Kamloops west end. He gave us a tour of his home, and gave us a lot of information about how he's managed to retrofit his home to make it more efficient - especially in regards to insulation.





The majority of these older homes have no insulation at all, and very thin 4" walls - to add insulation to them, the most effective method to add spray foam insulation. To do this, you either have to create spaces on the inside or the outside of the home in order to fill it up with insulation.

This photo is an example of where they've drilled holes to fill the walls - these holes are across his entire house.



It can be very difficult to add air space and circulation into the attic space of a home, because of the way that the rafters were built.



The house has been added onto and altered, a basement has been dug out where there was not one originally, and has left the foundation which was previous underground now exposed. There are now holes in the foundation which create drafts through the entire bottom portion. You can also see where the foundation changes to brick. The original foundation was original stone, which was not properly sealed.



Hung windows are some of the most effective windows in terms of creating circulation because you can open them at the top and at the bottom, to allow hot air to escape and cool air to enter. However, there are areas on either side of the window where the weights hang, and there is no way to add any insulation to those spaces at all. There are also a lot of issues with hung windows because they do not seal very well in the winter.



Despite their old age, they were built to be easy to maintain, and small panels can be removed on the inside of these hung windows so that you can replace the cotton strings which hold the weights to balance the windows.