In our last article, we discussed what happened during the Lac-Mégantic disaster. This time, we’d like to take a closer look at the adverse outcomes of that disaster and compare how train accidents compare to pipeline accidents. At the moment, there is no option where oil isn’t shipped. People in BC and Ontario need to
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At WestCal, we’re decidedly pro-pipeline. We’ve discussed this issue before, but for anyone who’s new to our blog, here’s the Coles Notes version. Protesting pipelines doesn’t prevent oil from being transferred out of Alberta to the other provinces. It just means the oil is transported by train or truck instead. Now we’ll be the first
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Did you hear what happened at the Calgary zoo? That sounds like the setup for a joke, but in all seriousness, the zookeepers brought the penguins indoors because our city was too bloody cold for even subantarctic birds to be outside. Of course at the beginning of December, we were seeing unheard of highs nearing
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New Years is a particularly good time to look back at all the projects we’ve worked on and forward to everything we hope to accomplish in 2018. While it’s easy to look at our business as just doing insulation and firestopping, we like to think of our goals in different terms than that. Make the
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It’s no secret that our team at Westcal are huge fans of insulation. For us, insulation just makes sense. It’s affordable and offers a ton of savings. It’s one of the few investments that pays for itself and starts saving you money in just one year. Unfortunately, a lot of people only somewhat recognize the
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We don’t need to tell Canadians that winters in the Great White North can get very cold. In fact, 4.5% of all deaths in Canada are related to cold and exposure. What may surprise you is that the majority of these deaths actually took place on fairly mild days when people weren’t wearing enough layers.
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There seems to be many people who either believe that mineral wool and fibreglass are the same insulation or that they’re similar enough that the differences don’t matter. We’ll admit that we take insulation a tad more seriously than most people, but we think understanding the difference between these two products can help contractors and
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There’s been a lot of toxic talk surrounding Energy East, so we thought we’d try to tackle the subject — and why everyone is mad at each other — in brief. Energy East was a proposed and very controversial 4500 km pipeline that would help move Albertan and Saskatchewan oil from the prairies out to
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As a company, one of your most important assets is your team of employees. Not only are these the people that keep everything running smoothly and your operation generating money, but they also represent one of your largest investments. Years of training, benefits, and salaries go into your staff, so it’s vital that you keep
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Anyone who’s ever been burned after grabbing a piece of metal that was warming up for only a moment knows that metal heats up and cools off extremely quickly. Metal has a very low specific heat capacity which means it easily transfers thermal energy. This is a very useful property in some respects — it
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