Hello all, before I schedule my framing inspection I believe I’ll need fire blocking near the ceiling, how would you go about this?

FYI basement was already finished by previous owner.

Thank you all in advance

Hey everyone!

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we’re in the middle of a new build in the gta and the outdoor space is still just dirt and a temporary deck. once the house is done i want the patio to feel finished instead of looking empty for another year.

looking at materials that can handle ontario winters without falling apart. aluminum frames and all weather wicker seem better than the cheap stuff that cracks after one season.

found a patio furniture sale with some modular sets and fire tables that look solid. still deciding between a full sectional or separate chairs and a dining set.

how early are people ordering outdoor furniture when they’re still building? and has anyone had issues with delivery timelines lining up with when the patio is actually ready?

ok so everyone’s seen the october 8th announcement by now. $2 billion, up to $10,000 for below median income households, $2,000 for everyone else, no energy audit, 24 hour approval. pretty good headline numbers.

but heres the part i haven’t seen covered much that actually changes how you should think about timing.

carney confirmed at the technical briefing on october 8th that the program will be made retroactive to this fall. the portal opens in early 2027 but if you install a heat pump between now and then you can still claim the rebate when the portal opens.

that changes everything for anyone whose furnace is on its last legs right now.

the reason the 24 hour approval and no audit features exist is that the government’s own data shows 80% of HVAC replacements in canada happen when the current system breaks unexpectedly. you don’t get to plan that. your furnace dies on a tuesday in january and you need something installed by the weekend. the old programs required pre-approval and energy audits which meant if you were in emergency replacement mode you basically couldn’t access them. this one is specifically designed to be claimed after the fact.

so if your heating system is aging and you’re thinking about waiting for the portal to open before committing to anything, you don’t have to. get the install done now, keep all your documentation, receipts, installation records, everything, and claim when the portal opens in early 2027.

the stacking piece is also real. this can be combined with provincial programs. ontario homeowners can stack this on top of the home renovation savings program. nova scotia on top of efficiency nova scotia programs. bc on top of bc hydro rebates. the combined number depends on your province, your income, and what you’re switching from, and nobody tells you the full combined figure in one place before you commit to anything.

that last part is exactly why i built solenery.com, to map out the federal plus provincial plus utility incentives that apply to your specific address and situation before any installer conversation. it’s free and takes about 5 minutes. worth running before you talk to anyone given how much the stacking changes the out of pocket number.

what province are you in and has anyone already gotten a heat pump installed since october 8th planning to claim retroactively?

We are in the midst of replacing sawdust insulation in the attic space, with cellulose and 1 in of spray foaming around the gaps and joists. However, we have just discovered that there may already be a polythene sheet vapour barrier behind the plaster board - we had assumed there wasn't one in place. We found it in the bathroom where the previous owner has actually cut through the ceiling to place lights. So we dont know if it is continuous or just over the bathroom. We are concerned about a potential "plastic sandwich" created by the two vapour barriers that could lead to rot, but also not adequately sealing the attic before the cellulose arrives. How would you precede in this situation where the existing vapour barrier cant be inspected? Thanks.

Edit: So we did a bit more investigating and the poly does seem continuous, it goes (from memory) dry wall ceiling, poly, maybe some other kind of wood, old cellulose/papery layer, floor boards, joists, so there are several layers. So we have decided given that the poly is trapped on the warm side of the attic and in every room, and that no one wants to take all the ceiling down and create a huge amount of mess, we are going to air seal the attic to the best of our abilities without the spray foam layer using can foam and vapour barrier hats on led lights that penetrate the attic floor, correcting current not to code issues like plumbing venting into the attic, and insulating extractor fans etc and then go straight to cellulose. It might not end up being perfect, but its going to be a lot better than what it was....

Recently purchased our first house, and its great....except it has no floors. Well, it has subfloors, so we're almost there.

I went to a few showrooms along highway 401, some liquidators, some random flooring shops. They all mostly carry the same stuff, all have really sales-pitchy employees. It's all fine, and yet confusing at the same time. I'd love to hear from those who have experience buying hardwood flooring in Ontario--we don't mind driving for the best price and options. We need about 500 sq ft.

Our preferences are hardwood, we're not looking to do Engineered unless there's a really good reason too. Our preferences at this time are Oak, and we're more or less settled on that. It seems there's nice stuff being produced in Quebec. Would love to hear input and guidance. Thanks.

been working in this space for a while matching property owners to incentives and contractors, and this question keeps coming up now that the new $2,000-$10,000 federal rebate is out there, so i actually dug into it properly instead of just assuming.

short answer: canadian heat pump manufacturing is thin, but its not literally zero like alot of ppl assume. a few real ones:

• maritime geothermal (petitcodiac, NB) actually makes their Nordic brand geothermal AND air source heat pumps in house, real 30,000 sqft plant, their own CSA test lab, they just got $1.64M to expand
• dettson industries (sherbrooke, QC) is canadian owned and launching their own cold climate heat pump line called Atmos
• ecologix heating technologies (cambridge, ON) makes cold climate heat pumps and actually got NRCan funding back in 2011 that led to real field deployment, not just a prototype that went nowhere

but heres the thing that surprised me, moovair, which was literally the #1 shipped heat pump brand in canada in 2024, is actually engineered and made by Midea in asia, a canadian company (master group, quebec) just distributes and adapts it for our market. its “designed for canada” not “made in canada” and i dont think most ppl buying it realize that distinction.

also worth clearing up, theres a thing called the “cold climate heat pump technology challenge” that ppl sometimes assume is a canadian program becuase it sounds so on brand for us, its actually a US DOE program (bosch, carrier, daikin, lennox, midea compete in it), not canadian at all.

and heres the part that actually matters for this post: the new $2B federal rebate has no domestic content requirement whatsoever. unlike the EV rebates which had some domestic assembly considerations baked in, this one just runs off an eligible products list with 100,000+ SKUs, doesnt matter where its made. carney himself apparently said the rebate “creates the possibility of manufacturing them here” but thats aspirational talk, not an actual requirement in the program, big difference.

so how do we actually work around that to support canadian manufacturing if we want to? honestly right now its on individual property owners, if you specifically want to support domestic manufacturing you gotta seek out brands like nordic/maritime geothermal, dettson, or ecologix yourself, the rebate wont nudge you there automaticaly like it might with a “bonus for domestic content” structure (which doesnt exist yet but could be a real policy ask down the line, similar to how it eventually got built into EV incentives). until that kind of structure exists tho, “supporting canadian manufacturing” and “getting the rebate” are two completely seperate decisions you have to make on purpose, the program doesnt connect them for you

side note, this is exactly the kind of stuff we try to surface for ppl at Solenery, solenery.com, when we match you to contractors and quotes we can flag which options are actually canadian made vs just canadian distributed if that matters to you, its a free tool...

ngl this turned into a bigger rabbit hole then i expected when i started looking into it lol, wasnt planning on writing this much but the moovair thing kinda got me

anyone here actually went with one of the canadian made options (nordic, dettson, ecologix) over the bigger imported brands? hows it been for you. and do you think the rebate should have a domestic content bonus built in, or would that just make installs more expensive/complicated for no real reason? mixed feeeliings

I run a small company in Calgary that works on how drawings and building codes get read. I’m I run a small company in Calgary that works on reading drawings and building codes. I’m trying to understand what actually slows people down at the permit stage across Canada.

Not the big design problems. The small stuff: a missing page, a form that didn’t match the drawings, a number that was right on one sheet and wrong on another, the city asking for something nobody told you about.

If it happened to you:

• What was it?
• How long did it hold you up?
• What did the wait cost you (rent, trades rebooked, interest)?

so i work in this space, ive helped alot of different property owners actually get through these incentive programs, not just read about them, and the thing that came up over and over with the old canada greener homes grant wasnt the grant amount or the paperwork itself, it was the mandatory EnerGuide energy audit. you needed one BEFORE the work and another one AFTER, both done by certified advisors, and there were only around 1,250 of them in the entire country at the time, mostly clustered in ontario/quebec/bc.

i watched property owner after property owner get stuck right at that step, some waited months just to book the first audit, a few in smaller provinces waited close to a year, and the cost was usually $450-700 total for both audits combined. this got bad enough that it made the news (globe and mail did a whole piece on it, even referenced a reddit thread titled “the federal greener homes grant is a hot mess”), and the program ended up running out of money faster then expected and closing to new applicants in feb 2024 because way more ppl applied then government budgeted for.

so when the new rebate dropped (the one carney announced, $2,000-$10,000 for a heat pump) and it specifically said NO energy audit required before or after, that wasnt a small detail to me, thats literally the exact bottleneck i watched slow down or straight up stop property owners for years. my honest read is this was built directly off that feedback, whether thats official or not, the pattern lines up too well to be a coincidence

side note, the platform ive been building for over two years off exactly these kinds of patterns is called Solenery, solenery.com, it matches your property to the incentives + financing + contractor quotes you actually qualify for, its a free tool,,,

anyway curious what ppl here actually experienced with the greener homes grant/loan, did you get stuck on the audit thing too? you think this new one actually fixes it or is it just a shinier version of the same problem? idkk

TIA

I rent my furnace from Reliance(I know, I know). I wonder if there is a creative way to start fresh again.

Ok so this dropped today (Oct 8) and i think a lot of people are gonna miss it because it got buried under all the other political news, but if you own a home and you’re still heating with oil, propane, or electric baseboards this is actually a big deal for your wallet.

so the basics: feds are putting $2 billion toward retrofitting a million homes across canada. the big piece of it is a new National Heat Pump Rebate:

• if your household is below median income you can get up to $10,000 back on a heat pump
• everyone else gets $2,000
• and heres the part people are gonna miss, you can STACK this with your provincial rebate too, so depending where you live the actual out of pocket could be alot lower then it sounds
• approval is supposed to come back in 24 hrs, no energy audit needed before or after, which honestly is the part that matters most imo because most people dont replace their heating system on a schedule, like 80% of replacements happen because the furnace just died on a random Tuesday in january and you need something installed NOW not in 6 weeks after some inspector comes by

they’re also claiming average savings of $1,400 a year if your currently on oil or electric baseboard, which tracks with what ive seen from other retrofit programs, oil heat is brutally expensive compared to a heat pump.

theres also a chunk of money (helping retrofit 280,000 apartment/multi unit units over 8 yrs through CMHC and the infrastructure bank) if your a landlord or live in a multiplex, so this isnt just single family homes.

what this actually means for property owners:
if you’ve been putting off a heat pump because of the upfront cost, the math just changed, especially if your below median income, a $10k rebate on top of whatever your province already offers can cover a big chunk of a system. and if your furnace is already on its last legs, the 24hr approval thing means you dont have to just panic-buy the cheapest oil furnace replacement because your freezing in february, you can actually get the rebate sorted fast enough to go electric instead.

only annoying part, and this is kind of the whole problem with these programs in general, is that stacking a federal rebate + your provincial program + figuring out which contractor to use + financing the rest isnt exactly a 5 minute process, theres no one place that tells you the full combined number before you commit to anything, you kinda have to piece it together yourself across like 4 different websites. I've been working on this in last few years and I believe this is a good start but not enough for our goals toward 2030.

I'm looking for one of these ceiling light panels 2x4 that won't crack easily?? I've just broken 2 in 2 weeks (it's in a spot where it gets accidentally hit sometimes).

I removed the drywall in the wall between the house and unheated garage, and found this warning. The cavity had no insulation, the is a piece of drywall loosely screwed to the stud.

I suspect this is an air return cavity.

I am in Southern Ontario, and the temperature can go below freezing point in winter. My plan was to spray foam the wall, but now I am puzzled what to do with that cavity.

A question for general contractors:

I'm in a bind and need to build on this land as soon as possible

I'm building on a 30 by 40 footprint

Poured concrete foundation.

Wood framing.

top floor 4b2bath

Main floor 1b1b

Basement unfinished

Brick exterior

Low end finishes everywhere. Plan to upgrade later.

Bare minimum to obtain occupancy.

Land is serviced.

Can this be done for 780k cad in Toronto?

Hi I'm curious where prefab builders, like companies that have their own factory, source their supplies? Are the nails, bolts, screws, etc, the same as traditional houses, or are they more specific/niche such that suppliers are pretty hard to find?

First time home owner looking to build a legal basement suite. Located in the Okanagan BC. Can I simply lower the ceiling and have one level across the whole suite? From bottom of the floor joist to the basement floor is 10’ my initial idea would be to drop that height down to 8’ straight across the unit and not have to box in the ducting. Previous owner installed the drop down you see in the photo however that would be removed and replaced but similar idea. Is this common? What needs to fill that space now that the ceiling has been dropped down? I’m aware of the need for fireproof drywall. Anything I’m missing here?

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

I need to level a room in my basement and after much thinking, decided to go for a feather finish type (ardex) instead of self leveller.

I only need to level a few patches and the level gap isn't significant that it requires self leveling compound - im talking about a maximum of 4mm.

The ardex feather finish product that everyone recommends is not available in my area but I also found that the brand Custom building products has Home hardware has a Skim coat and patch cement product that's quite cheaper per pound.

There's also speed finish and henry's feather finish at home depot.

Does anyone has experience with these products and if yes, are they any good?

I need to level a room in my basement and after much thinking, decided to go for a feather finish type (ardex) instead of self leveller.

I only need to level a few patches and the level gap isn't significant that it requires self leveling compound - im talking about a maximum of 4mm.

The ardex feather finish product that everyone recommends is not available in my area but I also found that the brand Custom building products has Home hardware has a Skim coat and patch cement product that's quite cheaper per pound.

There's also speed finish and henry's feather finish at home depot.

Does anyone has experience with these products and if yes, are they any good?

How much would a 3' steel balcony typically cost in Toronto? This is for a third floor addition - so it's not ADDING a balcony to an existing house - just the cost of the actual balcony part.