The Hammer

RenoMark has declared October Renovation Month and is celebrating with a firestorm of outreach to homeowners educating them about home renovation contracting and showcasing great work by their members. The Hammer wanted to get in on the action, so we invited Dwayne Butler of Master Edge Homes to talk about a big opportunity for home renovators today: adapting residences for use by elderly and disabled owners to enable them to stay in their homes. Butler explains the Canadian Home Builders' Association's Adaptiv Home course, which trains contractors about what kinds of renovations these projects require, and how to execute them safely and in accordance with regulations.

In 2021, Ontario's Home Construction Regulatory Authority took over licensing and regulation of new home sellers in the province, leaving Tarion to adjudicate warranty disputes only between buyers and sellers. As the enforcer of homebuilder licensing requirements and watchdog for violations of the law and good conduct, CEO Wendy Moir has the sometimes challenging task of ensuring professional and aboveboard behaviour in our industry. She joins The Hammer to explain the HCRA's role, outline her approach to the regulatory enforcement and share her insights from many years of seeing it all in the construction industry.

Calculating the embodied carbon of a building is a process of adding up all the inputs. So it follows that the more inputs there are, the more opportunities there are to increase a project's global warming potential and make the project less sustainable. Not a big concern for most projects today, but soon will be as code authorities move closer and closer to limiting the allowable GWP of new builds and renovations. As a building science expert working for Canadian spray foam manufacturer, Elastochem, Rocky Boyer has taken a deep dive into these issues and realized that each layer in a wall assembly adds multiple sources of carbon that often aren't counted, but might be under a strict GWP-limiting regime. He brings the receipts with a story about a project where his company was able to eliminate three of five wall layers in a heritage retrofit by using spray foam insulation, thereby eliminating the carbon contribution of materials, transportation, installation and replacement for dozens of wall components.

With Mickel Maalouf, building science manager at Huntsman Building SolutionsBuilders and contractors: as energy codes evolve, smarter wall assemblies can help improve thermal performance, airtightness, jobsite efficiency, and long-term comfort. In this episode of The Hammer podcast, Huntsman Building Solutions discusses how interior-applied continuous insulation with closed-cell spray foam can help reduce thermal bridging, support faster construction sequencing, and deliver high-performance building envelopes for today’s Canadian projects. Listen now to learn what this approach could mean for your next build.

Jobsites are changing, technology is changing and Canadian rental stores are changing along with them. Equipment rental operations are no longer just dingy garages where you pick up whatever is there - today's operations feature specialty divisions with rare equipment you won't find anywhere else and expert advice on how to accomplish your toughest tasks. Derek Cashmore, director of sales for Cooper Equipment Rentals, joins Get More From Your Rental Store week to explain how specialty rental operations deliver solutions to complex construction tasks like concrete curing, trench safety, dewatering, jobsite power supply, safety and more.