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Everything electrical in a home starts at one grey box in the basement. Keep scrolling and the camera goes inside it: the main, the buses, the breakers that feed a kitchen, a charger, a hot tub.

The utility's side ends at the meter socket. From the weatherhead down, the mast, the socket and the service entrance cable are yours, and a 100 A socket is the first thing a 200 A upgrade replaces.

One two-pole breaker sets the limit for the whole house. Homes built before 1980 often have 60 or 100 A behind this cover. Heat pumps, chargers and suites are why 200 A is now the common upgrade.

Two copper buses carry 120 V each. Breakers clip on and split the house into circuits: 15 A for plugs and lights, 20 A for kitchens and baths, 30 to 60 A for the big appliances. Full panels get sub-panels, not tandems.

A 40 A range, a 50 A EV charger, a 60 A hot tub with its own GFCI. Each needs a dedicated two-pole breaker, the right gauge of cable and a permit. Together they are what pushes a 100 A service over the line.

Aluminum branch wiring from 1965 to 1978 needs rated connectors or copper pigtails at every device. Bedrooms need AFCI, wet areas need GFCI, and every breaker should match its wire. The panel tells the story of the house.

Switch loads on and off and watch the gauge in the panel.

Calgary sits in Canada's hail corridor. Bruised shingles lose their granules and fail years early. Photograph the roof, the vents and the siding straight after a storm; the claim is easiest while the damage is fresh.

Heat leaking into the attic melts the snow from below. The water refreezes over the cold eave, builds a dam and backs up under the shingles. The fix is almost never on the roof: it is air sealing and insulation below it.

In a cold snap, moist house air frosts on the underside of the deck and on every nail tip. A chinook thaws it all at once and it rains inside the attic. Bath fans, dryer vents and ceiling leaks are the usual sources.

About 400 mm of insulation reaches R-50, but only if the air leaks below it are sealed first. Soffit vents in, ridge vent out, baffles to keep the channel open, and every fan duct ending at a roof cap instead of in the insulation.

Gold-brown, pebbly attic insulation from before 1990 may contain asbestos. Do not disturb it. Sample, test and plan abatement before anyone adds insulation or runs new wiring through it.

A newer roof with a clear south or west face is the moment to assess solar, before the next re-roof. Calgary issued thousands of solar permits in the last three years, and every array ends at the same panel in the basement.

Fogged glass, cold frames and rotten sills show up on the same wall the ice dam drips down. Window replacement, siding and decking are the exterior jobs that finish the envelope.

Every drain in the house falls by gravity into one lateral that runs under the yard to the city main. It is yours to the property line. HAUSE Sewer is 40-plus sites about that one pipe, and this drawing walks its length.

A crawler goes in at the cleanout and records the whole run: material, joints, cracks, bellies, roots and where the line meets the main. Before buying a house, before digging, and before accepting any quote.

Clay tile laterals from before 1980 have a joint every 60 to 90 cm. Roots find the water vapour at a joint, grow in, and catch everything that follows. The first sign is usually the lowest drain gurgling.

A cable auger cuts a hole through a blockage. A hydro-jet nozzle at 4,000 psi pulls itself up the line and scours the pipe wall clean. Which one depends on the pipe material and what the camera found.

Two ways to get a new pipe without digging up the yard. A resin-soaked liner is inverted into the old pipe and cured in place. Or a bursting head splits the old pipe while it pulls new HDPE behind it. Both need a camera before and after.

Collapsed pipe, a bad belly or a new infill build means open-cut: a trench to the main, new PVC on gravel, and a permitted connection at the property line. Written scopes make the quotes compare like for like.

Two more pipes share the same trench. The water service freezes, bursts or is grey Poly-B. The weeping tile at the footing silts up, and the sump that drains it has to work on the night it rains.

Uranium in the soil decays to radium, then to radon gas. The warm house draws it up through slab cracks, the wall-to-floor joint and the sump. No smell, no colour, and the second leading cause of lung cancer in Canada.

An alpha-track detector on the lowest lived-in floor for 91 days in heating season. Health Canada's guideline is 200 Bq/m³. Prairie homes test high more often than most of the country, and the only way to know is the test.

A core through the slab, a small pit in the gravel below it, and a 100 mm PVC riser. The fan creates a vacuum under the whole floor, so the gas goes to the pipe instead of the house. Cracks and the sump lid get sealed so the vacuum holds.

An inline fan draws 50 to 90 W, runs for years, and sits in the attic or outside so any leak is downstream of the living space. The exhaust ends above the eave, away from windows. A U-tube manometer on the riser shows it is pulling.

A C-NRPP certified mitigator retests after the system runs. Most homes drop below 100 Bq/m³. Calgary, Edmonton, Airdrie, Cochrane and Okotoks each have a HAUSE radon site, and the national ones cover the rest.

A burst supply line puts 20 litres a minute on the floor. Shut off the main, kill power to the area, move what you can, and photograph everything before the first wet thing leaves the house. The insurer will ask.

When the lateral backs up, the lowest drain is the one that overflows. This is category 3 water. Everything porous it touched goes out, and the sewer line that caused it gets scoped before the floor goes back in.

The fire is out in minutes. The smoke keeps working for days: soot settles on every surface above the fire, acids etch glass and metal, and odour soaks into drywall and ducts. Sprinklers, where they exist, change the whole story.

Wet drywall grows mould in 48 to 72 hours. Past a few square metres it means containment, negative air and HEPA scrubbers. Chemical, biohazard and industrial cleanups follow the same rules with different gear.

Textured ceilings, 9×9 floor tiles, pipe wrap and vermiculite from before 1990 are tested before anyone swings a hammer. Alberta requires it on most renovation and demolition work. A lab result costs less than a stop-work order.

Air movers and dehumidifiers for three to five days, moisture readings on the framing, then the trades come back in order: drywall, paint, floors, trim, a deep clean. Six weeks from the hour-zero photo to the finished room.

Crated, levelled, gas and venting connected, permit closed. First-time additions are their own trade: the right opening, the right circuit, the right drain, before anything is unboxed. Installing.ca owns the day-zero jobs.

A filter every three months, a tune-up every autumn, ducts cleaned when the renovation dust settles. The cheapest years in a furnace's life are the ones somebody looked after. Maintaining.ca is the calendar.

The furnace still works, so make it work better: a smart thermostat, a cold-climate heat pump beside it, a bigger panel to feed it. Upgrading.ca is 200 named improvements to a home you are keeping.

The tank rusts at the base one winter morning. Out with the 189 L tank, in with a tankless unit on the wall, or a new tank sized for the family. Replacing.ca and a dozen water-heater and furnace sites cover the swap.

Disconnect, cap the gas, drain, dolly it out the door, recycle the steel. Removal is a trade with its own hazards and its own site. The space it leaves is where the next idea starts.

The basement becomes a legal suite. Asbestos test, permits, selective demolition, a bin in the driveway, and the whole cycle starts again with a new install. Demolishing.ca plans the strip-out so the rebuild has somewhere to go.