7 Way to Make Your Roof Last Longer

Man cleaning the rooftop from pine

Your roof is a principal component of your home, and if you live in a single family dwelling – it’s your roof alone. You’ve bought it,paid for it, and we imagine you’d like to get as many years out of it as possible. Needless to say, re roofing a home is an expensive venture. But when you get to that point, it’s not an optional one. You have to replace it!

As a premiere home restoration service provider here in Vancouver, those of us here at Urban Environmental have learned a thing or two (or two hundred) about what it takes to properly maintain a roof, so we’ll share some of that with you today. read more

Homeowners Can – And Should – Be Proactive in Preventing Flooded Basements

mold and water damage from basement leak

It’s that time of year again in the Lower Mainland, and with this year’s recurring snowfalls that are often followed by rain when the temperatures sneaks back above zero (a very common trend in the Southwest corner of BC) there’s going to be more than a few flooded basements before spring arrives. We understand the concerns. We’re property restoration experts in Vancouver, but most of us are homeowners ourselves.

Naturally, homes in low-lying areas with subterranean basements are going to be most at risk, and we imagine the owners of those types of homes really don’t need to be appraised of this fact. There’s nothing we can do to convince Mother Nature to cease with blankets of snow followed by the deluges of rain, but smart homeowners will be proactive in taking steps to ensure their basement isn’t flooded. Or is flooded much less significantly than if they were to do nothing at all. read more

Effectively Identifying and Remediating PCBs in Building Materials

UrbanEnvironmental.ca

Asbestos continues to be public-enemy #1 when it comes to building material contaminants that property owners want to quickly identify and be thoroughly rid of when it comes to their properties and the air quality within it. That’s perfectly natural given the health risks associated with breathing in asbestos fibres, but there’s another potentially airborne contaminant that was incorporated into building materials in far previous decades that needs some attention paid to it as well.

PCBs, or Polychlorinated Biphenyls, were found in building materials used between roughly 1950 and 1979 in North America, both in Canada and the USA. As is the case with asbestos, one of the more common locations for them was in schools and other public-utility buildings and offices. read more

Tips and Tricks to Prevent Mold in your home

Mold, it is one of the biggest issues that many homes face on the West Coast, and yet you can avoid this expensive and dangerous issue. We here at Urban Environmental have brought together some of the top tips on how to avoid getting mold, and how to deal with water within the home.

  • Remove those items that may cause mold

This seems simple, but yet many who have mold tend to forget to remove problem items from their home. Take a look in your basement, and make sure to limit the amount of stored materials within it. If you have badly damaged items or ones that reek of must, throw them out. Avoid storing firewood within the home; try the side of the house, or a simple shed to place it in. If you have carpet that is damp, remove it and that goes for bathrooms and basements especially. Finally, do not store things in cardboard boxes on your basement floors; it just simply avoids future issues that may arise. read more

Common Asbestos Myths

UE-AsbestosMyths-bThese days, almost all of us are aware of the dangers asbestos can pose, we realize the importance of having a specialist deal with any job which may involve disturbing or removing asbestos. However, the general public’s awareness has not always been as good, which has led to some peculiar myths about asbestos. Here are some of the most common:

1) New build properties are free from asbestos.

Don’t assume that because your house or office is a new build that you’re not at risk. A 2014 HSE survey showed that only 15% of people knew that asbestos was still used in buildings up until the year 2000. read more

Asbestosis and Other Remaining Major Asbestos Diseases

UrbanEnvironmentsdotcainterstitial-lung-diseases

This is a continuation article on on asbestos-related disease listing, detailing some of the most debilitating and deathly asbestos-caused diseases.

Many thousands of scientific & medical publications have chronicled the understanding of the plethora of hazards of asbestos to human and other air-breathing, and even aquatic life. The development of today’s level of understanding began during the industrial revolution -most notably from the textile factories and mineral mines of Great Britain, Canada and the United States read more

The most harmful disease associated with Asbestos Exposure “Mesothelioma”

UrbanEnvironmental.ca

It is now generally known in modern times that airborne asbestos exposure is dangerous and harmful to a person’s health.

The 3 types of “asbestos-related lung disease” are: 1) scarring (“asbestosis”), 2) non-cancerous disease of the tissue of the lining of the surface of the lung (“pleural disease”), and lung cancer (of the lungs or their outer lining tissue [“mesothelioma”]).

In this first of a short series of articles, we will go into detail about the worst of the batch, that is “mesothelioma”. read more