Book Series
Title 1 - Fragile Shelters - REVISED
What is Inside this Revised/Updated Manual!
This recent edition of Fragile Shelters contains eleven (11) chapters; three (3) more than the original manual. All the Chapters contain updated and informative content.
With insights from leading experts and years of experience, Cam and Paul offer the reader a blueprint for fortifying your home, preparing for the worst and recovering from disasters. Whether you’re confronting extreme winds, floods or the health impact of smoke, this manual addresses vital questions about adapting your home for a sustainable future.
Chapters
- Heat – Understanding the impact from excessive heat on our homes and interior occupied spaces. Including methods and suggestions to protect your living environment.
- Fire and Smoke – Realzing the impact of a wildfire, how it affects our landscape and home along with the effects upon the occupants within a home.
- Wind – An undeerrated climate extreme that leaves long-term effects and massive replacement costs along with extensive upheaval for residents of any home.
- Water – The largest single extreme climate issue with respect to home insurance claims. What to do and how to protect your home from flooding.
- Extreme Precipation – A new chapter that singles out the climate crisis has increased extremes in snow, hail and ice and how they affect every home.
- Air Quality – We are what we breathe and this chapter informs on the effects of poor indoor air, how to protect, secure and evaluate your home’s indoor air quallity.
- Disaster Preparation – There are numerous ways with reasonable cost to prepare your home for any climate crisis event. Here you learn what they are.
- Home Generation – Access to or a permanent installation, a generator that can support your home and maintain a safe lifestyle has become a necessity. Here you will find out how to do this.
- Home Insurance – This new chapter discusses the ever evolving issues of obtaining proper insurance to protect your home, the kind of extras to buy and the issues your insurance company is facing.
- Building Technology – This chapter looks at some options, methods of home building and the effort it takes to make your home more secure.
- Glossary of Climate Technology – The various words and phrases now used can be difficult to understand. In this new section we explain in simple terms some of the most common words and statements.
Title 2 - Building to Protect & Shelter
Manual #2 is about changing our perspective through education, experience and recommendations for numerous credible trades and builders. This manual is a “hands on” guide of what a home should and could be doing to perform at a higher standard while protecting your loved ones and personal possessions from the climate challenges we now face and in the future.
Breaking the conventional cycle of a block basement, wood frame and vinyl siding, this book takes you above “a code built” home to one that is a fortress of comfort and value, keeping in mind that this home must be affordable.
In Manual Two we will guide you and help you make intelligent choices, with options that fit your needs, conscious of reasonable cost and show you how to choose what is the best built home for your individual situation. Delving into the methodologies and standards that have been developed and are readily available for a performance driven home. Included is extensive research on factory built homes.
A home assembled to perform and stand up to crazy fluctuating temperatures, wildfire, wind and rain coupled with the ability to control energy use against rising costs. A home that will work for you every day and bring you into the future safely, comfortably and affordable.
Chapters
- Carbon Impact
- Building Certifications
- Planning Your Home
- Basements and Foundations
- Stick Frame Assembly
- Insulated Concrete Forms
- Structural Insulated Panel System
- Factory Built Homes
- Retrofit an Existing Home
- Insulations – Types and Methods
- Roofs and Siding
- Heating, Ventilation and Cooling
- Alternative Energy
- Sustainable Communities
Title 3 - Aging in Place
How to Stay in Your Home
This manual, #3 in our “Fragile Shelters Series” is being written for seniors, by seniors. Both of us are past the “magic 65” and have numerous friends and contacts who are living the “Stay at Home Dream.” With support systems, family and community, many Seniors want to finish their lives in their home. In many cases it’s the home where the family grew up and dreams were made.
This clearly written manual will help take away some of the frustrations and limitations of maintaining a home. As we realize that age has become a limiting factor and we are unable to do some things, guidance is needed. A manual such as this will go a long way with preventative safety and guidance suggestions to what a home should be, when an ageing in place decision has been made.
Chapters
- The Golden Years at Home
- Everything costs so much!
- Who do I turn to for help?
- Climate Crisis – Making my Home Durable
- Making it Accessible and Safe
- Home Scams – What to Watch for
- Identifying when your home is no longer the best option
Title 4 - "Avery's Dream"
Building a Climate Crisis Home
The fourth in our “Fragile Shelters” series, is written with not only the technical expertise you expect, but a very human touch. Cliff and Danielle have long dreamed of a final home, one where they could leave to their beautiful daughter, Avery, an everlasting home. This home has begun the engineered concrete pad with an electric boiler, hydronic radiant heated pad installed, is finished.
This couple have agreed to allow you into their thoughts, the “how to” and each step as they build their final home. They will be using the concepts and methods documented in Manual #2 “Climate Crisis … Building to Protect and Shelter.” They will share their laughter, tears, frustrations and joys of building your own home in today’s climatic challenges.
Acting as their guide, Paul and I will take you through each step, allowing you the reader to feel like you are part of their everlasting experience. A testament to the Canadian Dream . . . your own home.
Chapters
- Building the dream – Cliff’s Model
- The permit maze – Getting the plans & drawings right
- Jumping through the hoops of Cost – Building out of Pocket
- Beginning – a designed radiant heat concrete pad
- The walls go up – taking the proper steps for extreme wind, rain and fire
- Roof frame & cover – such a critical part
- Protecting our dream – the siding must be right
- The cool/heat effect – where do we go with insulation
- Mechanicals – air quality with heat & cool in mind
- Protecting our home – landscape & grades
- Living the dream — we have done it!!!
Title 5 - "Home Inspection - A Fractious Industry"
Protecting canadian Home Buyers
With 20 plus years being involved in the building inspection business and in that same time period, Cam wrote two weekly columns, totaling over 1800 columns, for the Kingston Whig Standard. One of which was called “Ask the Inspector”. Readers had the opportunity to write in with questions. When Paul joined, he brought another skilled perspective to our business, a welcomed addition
Sadly, the home inspection business in Canada today is a mess. It is overrun with many improperly trained, poorly educated “inspectors”. In today’s climatic crisis finding a skilled, experienced inspector who can really help you understand your home is a challenge. There are a few respectable inspectors however, who can guide you so you are able to recognize the urgency of improvements to “weather the storm” that is vital to your home’s longevity.
This manual will offer some history of the home inspection business in Canada, how to pick a “quality inspector” and guide you through the process of understanding a home inspection report along with numerous tips on home maintenance.
Chapters
- How Home Inspection Began
- Why Home Inspection Licensing Failed
- Why is it so Hard to Find a good Home Inspector
- A Home Inspection Report: What it should say
- Can an Inspection Help me with the Climate Crisis
- How to use your Report Effectively
- Top 10 “Climate Crisis” Home Inspection Maintenance Tips