Home repair: Padded vinyl flooring is easier on the legs

Q. A large portion of our home has tile flooring. My husband and I are looking for a more flexible or softer walking surface because of age, leg and hip issues.

How can these tiles be totally changed without pulling them up? Can they be re-covered with cork, wood or carpet? We are trying not to go through all the dust, etc. Is there hope, or should we buy giant rubber shoes? Ha! Actually, we already are wearing shoes with orthotics.

A. The simplest thing would be to install wall-to-wall carpeting with a thick pad. Another option is Armstrong CushionStep, a vinyl flooring that has a built-in soft pad. There are three grades: Good, Better and Best. CushionStep comes in many patterns, from wood grain to slate and everything in between. It can be installed by a DIY’er, but you’ll have to remove the baseboards and door casings to fit the flooring tightly to the walls and prevent wrinkling, then reinstall the trim. A commercial Armstrong retailer is more likely to glue down the floor without having to remove the trim, but that is not a DIY job.

Q. The family room addition was built onto the back of our brick house on the first floor, meaning one of the walls in the family room is brick, with a pass-through where there was a window at one time. The other three walls are drywall with vinyl siding on the outside. This addition was built approximately three years before we bought the house in 2003.

The sliding door is on the wall exactly opposite the brick wall (the original outside of the house before the addition was built). The slider leads onto a deck.

The roof of the addition is asphalt shingle with flashing butting up against the house. The addition is one story; the house is two stories.

When it rains, it leaks from the ceiling above the pass-through and behind the frame of the slider onto the glass.

We were told by our insurance guy that the pitch/slope of the addition roof isn’t steep enough, that the flashing needs to be replaced and that we should get a rubber roof. We had the flashing replaced, but it didn’t help.

A: Thank you for sending additional information to your original question about leaks in your room addition. You either have two separate leaks or one source that is responsible for both.

The leak above the pass-through is due to a faulty flashing, and it sounds like the replacement didn’t do any good. If the top of the flashing was not inset into the bricks but caulked instead, this may be the cause. Caulking is not a permanent solution, especially if the contractor used silicone caulking, which has a tendency to separate from surfaces over time. If the leaks showed up recently, this may be the cause.

Your insurance agent is probably right. If the slope of the roof is less than 3-in-12, shingles should not have been used unless the entire roof deck was first covered with an ice- and water-protective membrane. A rubber roof should have been used.

Once you have the roof replaced and the flashing properly installed, preferably by a competent mason who can cut a slot in the mortar joint to inset the flashing, you’ll be able to tell if this is also the source of the sliding-door leakage. The leakage from the flashing could be running down, following the integral vapor retarder of the insulation (or a plastic vapor retarder stapled to the rafters if unfaced or blown-in insulation was used), until it reaches the far wall where the sliding door is. If the roof repair and proper flashing do not solve the leak at the head of the sliding door, the cause may be faulty installation of a housewrap.

Q. I think a small creature has died in between the first and second floors of our bedrooms. There is a terrible smell and a couple of dark spots on the corner ceiling. Do we have to break through the ceiling?

A. Small dead rodents such as mice will smell for a few days. Larger ones, such as squirrels, will smell for a week or two. The dark spots are likely the animal’s body fluids. You can simply repaint the ceiling. Unless the smell persists for weeks, which I doubt, there is no need to tear open the ceiling.

Q. Eleven years ago we bought a townhouse. We have the model of the 12 units with two gas fireplaces — very nice to look at, enclosed in marble with wooden mantels.

However, it has been impossible to use them for more than 30 to 60 minutes without the mantel and wall becoming exceedingly hot. Of the 12 units, six have fireplaces, and all have the same problem. We all should have contacted the builder and had him do something, but we didn’t. We would like to sell our unit, but we are afraid the next owner might burn the place down.

Do you have any suggestions? The name on the booklet says Monessen Hearth Systems. Of course, the warranty has expired.

A. Monessen sells only through dealers, but you can find the one nearest you at www.monessenhearth.com; click on Customer Care. If a dealer is in your area, ask him or her to send someone to check out the unit and its installation.

Hot marble may not present a danger, but any hot wood can. The installation may be the problem; in that case, you may have to call a contractor to take care of it.

Q. My parents recently installed an attic blanket in their house. The company, Energy Solutions of America (based in Ankeny, Iowa), makes an aluminum insulation. I think this thermal material is similar to Mylar, and it is touted as having great insulating properties that will save homeowners a lot of money in heating costs.

My parents were wondering what you thought of this product. Does it work? Will it save them a substantial amount of money (because it was not cheap to install)? Because of the mild winter we have had, they do not see any difference in their heating bill, but they also do not feel that the house has been any warmer since the attic blanket was installed.

They also wonder if there might be any health effects. It is an aluminum-based product, and we know that cooking with aluminum pots has been linked to adverse health effects such as Alzheimer’s disease. Do you know of any potential harmful side effects to having this product in the house?

Your thoughts on this matter would be very much appreciated by my folks, as the 90 days for product satisfaction will soon be up.

A. Reflective insulation works best in hot climates and has limited value in climates requiring significant heating, which is where your parents live since this was the reason they bought it.

Reflective insulation is most effective at reducing downward heat flow. In hot climates, stapling reflective insulation to the bottom of the rafters will keep the attic cooler — in turn, keeping the rooms below cooler as well — as the insulation re-emits radiant heat upward. The effect is to reduce the load on the air-conditioning system.

A reflective film, also known as a radiant barrier, installed on top of fibrous insulation will not only collect a lot of dust, reducing its effectiveness considerably, but also act as a vapor retarder on the wrong side of the insulation. That could possibly lead to condensation within the fibrous insulation.

If increasing the attic’s insulation for both the winter and the summer is the goal, the best way to do so is to blow in additional cellulose insulation. The cost is reasonable, and the effect is immediate.

Your parents may want to consider getting their money back and investing in additional insulation instead.

Cooking with aluminum is totally different from having a material coated with aluminum in an attic.

Q. I cannot get a straight answer regarding the proper way to insulate our crawl space. The house is a 100-year-old coal-mining home with 24-inch-wide foundation walls. The majority (90 to 95 percent) of the crawl space is above ground.

There are a few inches of topsoil, but below that is clay. Our intentions are to add 18 to 24 inches of soil all around the house, directing all the water into the storm drain at the corner of the yard. The added soil will be sloping away from the house. The middle part of the crawl space has a concrete floor, the front end of the home has a solid piece of rubber roofing on top of the dirt, and the back end of the house has some gravel with a solid piece of rubber roofing on top.

We were thinking of adding closed foam insulation to the outside walls and to the decking to keep the home and floors warmer. The electric furnace will be housed within the crawl space with a heat pump outside.

Do you recommend closed foam within a crawl space? Are we overdoing the spray foam on the walls and on the decking? What is the recommended procedure for insulating and ventilating a crawl space today? Almost every DIY show today has them spraying foam everywhere. One concern I have is the issue of safety and fire barrier with the spray foam.

I have asked a number of contractors about my concerns and the proper method of insulating a crawl space and, to be honest, I’ve gotten a different answer every time. One company recommends that we spray foam on the decking in addition to the outside walls. One company suggested that we spray foam only on the outside walls up to the seals, and another suggests a combination of both. One contractor suggested adding a fan to circulate air during the summer.

I thought we should spray foam only on the outside walls up to the decking to prevent all airflow. We will be recycling rubber roofing material to cover the dirt, bringing the rubber up at least 6 inches on the outside walls and then covering them with the spray foam to make a complete seal.

A. Today’s recommendation is to not ventilate a crawl space as long as the floor is covered with 3 to 4 inches of concrete over a stone base covered with plastic or just a 6-mil plastic sheet to keep the moisture in the soil. The use of rubber roofing as a vapor control should certainly qualify. Ventilation can bring in a lot of unwanted moisture during the summer when the air is humid.

Insulation of a crawl space should be governed by the composition of the soil outside the foundation and the depth of the foundation below grade. Your foundation, being 90 to 95 percent out of the ground, is not subject to any such consideration.

Foaming the inside of the exterior walls makes sense. I suggest you insulate only the walls and not the underside of the decking since the furnace will be in the crawl space.

Foam should be covered with a fireproof material. Some paints qualify (check with an experienced paint-store owner or employee), but they are not as good as gyp board. You may simply want to install a smoke detector in the crawl space.

Ÿ Henri de Marne was a remodeling contractor in Washington, D.C., for many years, and is now a consultant. Write to him in care of the Daily Herald, P.O. Box 280, Arlington Heights, IL 60006, or via email at henridemarne@gmavt.net.

© 2012, United Feature Syndicate Inc.