April turns to May

The warm weather has arrived. Our lot is ready and waiting for our house. We’re hoping for a start date soon. While there may be no signs of progress from the lot, much has been going on in the background. Here’s a little update on what we’ve been working on since the snow has melted.

As I mentioned earlier, our drawings are in for permit. Our permit is being help up at the moment as the city is waiting for us to provide them with some technical details. We are waiting for our pre-fab builder to provide us with these missing details. We’ve been bugging him and he keeps saying ‘they’re coming’. We’ll see. Hopefully we can connect and sort this out ASAP. You reading this Adam?

We met with our Kitchissippi ward Councillor Jeff Leiper, thanks to a suggestion from one of our followers. We introduced him to the project, to the Passivhaus standard, and got him interested in what will potentially be one of the first homes certified under Passivhaus, and certainly one of the first infill projects to pursue the standard. (I say potentially, because there may be a couple others going for certification this year). We also brought up the issue of waiving or lowering development fees for projects like ours that will put significantly less stress on the city’s infrastructure. He agrees it’s a good idea, but we will likely never realize the benefits of lobbying this issue with our build. Perhaps we will be paving the way for future builds. Urban infill development is a contentious issue. Done poorly, it has the potential to really alter the fabric of a community, in a negative way. Clearly, this is not our intent, which is probably why Jeff was interested in hearing about our project. People in our corner of Hintonburg are passionate about where they live. And so are we. 

On the subject of HIntonburg-ers, A couple weeks back, we invited our immediate neighbours over to walk them through our designs. We want to ensure relations are kept neighbourly. Unfortunately, they’ll have to put up with some construction mess this summer. The orange house was built only a couple summers ago, so they’re definitely sympathetic to the cause. And hopefully our yellow house neighbours will be too. I think they can appreciate that we considered all three houses — how they work together and react to one another — in the design. We couldn’t have asked for better neighbours.

And finally, we’re still negotiating scope and prices with a GC to help us get started on phase 1 — site prep through to interior framing. The build is getting real. We’re looking at costs in earnest and at ways to bring them down. 

Start date? It’s still TBD. We’re anxious to get this ball rolling rolling rolling. Stay tuned.

Going off-grid in the city

Elon Musk announcing the Tesla Home Battery. Image courtesy of GeekyGadgets.

There are three utilities that conventional urban homes take advantage of: electricity, gas and water/sewage. Going completely off-grid would imply ditching all three. But primarily, when the term “off-grid” is thrown around, it addresses the electrical grid.

Electricity

It’s incredibly frustrating to open up a hydro (electricity) bill. Half the cost is for delivery and fees alone. We already pay some seriously high rates for electricity in Ontario, which are only set to skyrocket in the near-future by as much as 40%. So much of our energy is nuclear, supplied by ageing power stations and is delivered via grids and infrastructure established half a century ago. There’s no shortage of uncertainty. Sure would be nice to go completely off-grid — to smugly sigh and sit back as the politicians and utility companies mess about. 

Alas. We will be plugging in to the grid. For the following reasons:

1. Capital costs. The grid is right at our door step and so the costs to connect are fairly minimal compared what they would be if we were to set ourselves up off-grid. If we were in the country, going off-grid would be a no-brainer, since the cost to connect would be significantly higher.
2. Space. Even though our energy requirements will be 80-90% less than an average home, we would still require a decent-sized array of solar panels to power it. This can be tricky on a small, urban site.
3. Storage. Solar panels only produce energy when there’s sun. But we often demand energy when there is no sun. The supply does not always keep up with the demand, and visa versa. So there has to be a storage solution. From what I understand, the storage process is inefficient— lots of energy gets lost in the process. 

Planning for the future.

There is hope that we will be able to go off-grid (or at least become partially self-sustainable) in the near future. Tesla is set to announce their home battery technology at the end of the month. We are anxiously awaiting the details. According to theverge.com, 

“The technology promises to store things like solar energy or potentially a mix of that and cheap electricity during off-peak hours, helping keeping state power grids balanced and trim bills by 20 to 30 percent for some customers.”

That would solve our storage issues. The space for our solar panels has been ear-marked for the roof of the garage that Mark has designed in to the master plan. The capital costs would definitely be the largest obstacle to overcome. Government incentive programs would go a long way here. 

Mark has been coveting a Tesla car since its debut. And now the Tesla house.

What about those other utilities?

Gas. We will be fossil-fuel independent. Hooray! We won’t be bringing a gas line in to our house. We won’t need gas for heat or hot water. For water, we are going with an efficient electric heat-pump hot water tank. 

Water and sewage. It just makes sense to connect to water and sewage in the city — to guarantee clean drinking water and treatment of waste water. I don’t think that the building code, nor the city, would even permit otherwise. What doesn’t make sense is that we flush our toilets and water our lawns with clean drinking water. Our house will be grey-water-ready. We don’t have the capital to get it going yet, but we don’t want to preclude it. What this means is that one day, we will be able to flush our toilets with used bath water instead of clean drinking water.

In short, we won't be going off-grid. We'll be 1/3, with a lofty potential for 2 out of 3. We’ll take it. And do everything we can to future-proof our home against rising energy prices.

Model house

What started out as a fun little project for our daughter has into something...more elaborate. Mark has had nothing to do with this one. I think it's a result of "I just want to get started already" frustration and the fact that, right now at least, the build is completely out of my control. A cardboard house is something I have control over (with my daughter's supervision, of course). 

Our zero energy house

Back in November, before commencing the redesign, Mark and I thought we needed to feel more connected to our land. So we camped out on it! The girls were safe and warm in the house with my mother who was visiting from Vancouver.

If the house build goes awry, the tent will be our fall-back. Do you need a permit for a tent? I bet the neighbourhood association would have something to say...

Step two: sell house

We bought the lot. Yay! Next up: sell our current house. Our little house has sold quickly in the past. But it takes a special buyer to fall in love with it. Fortunately we had Kerry to play matchmaker. It sold in only a couple weeks, even though it felt like an eternity. We've had so many special memories in the short time in our little house. We'll miss it, but take comfort in the fact that we'll be able to see it every day from across the street :)

Step one: buy land

Mark and I have always loved Hintonburg. We lived here when we went to University and moved in to our first apartment together on Bayswater after we graduated. As long as we're in Ottawa, it's the only neighbourhood that really feels like home. And now it's starting to live up to it's potential with all sorts of amazing restaurants and shops moving in.

When we bought our first house, we knew there was only one place we wanted to live – in Hintonburg. I remembered a sweet little house on Bayswater from when we were renting further up the street and said to Mark "I wish that little house would come up for sale, that's the only place I want to live". Low and behold, a couple of days later, it was up for sale. We made our move and have been blissfully living in our sweet little home ever since. But it wouldn't last long. We found out we were pregnant again after only a year and a half in the house! With our growing family, we would either have to renovate or move...or build.

Directly across the street from us was an empty lot. We had no idea whether or not the owners of the lot intended to sell it any time in the near future. But we liked to dream about it anyhow. "How amazing would that be...", "imagine..." we would say to eachother as we stared at it outside our living room window. So when we found out we were pregnant we started doing some digging. We looked at other land opportunities, in other neighbourhoods, but we'd always come back to the one across the street. There really was no where else in our minds. That was it. 

We enlisted the help of real estate agent extraordinaire, Kerry Millican. She is amazing. Having just gone through the whole process of building her own home in Hintonburg, she was on our team. She found out through the neighbourhood grapevine that the owners were going to sell the lot in the spring. Ack! Mark and I had to get the gears in motion if we were going to act on the lot. Kerry hooked us up with Etienne from Desjardins who helped us understand how construction mortgages work and how much we would be approved for. (Mark will write more about construction mortgages in a future post for those wanting to understand how we made this happen). Much to our surprise, the numbers were working in our favour. So when the lot was listed in the spring, we went for it.

We're movin' on up! From 106 Bayswater to 105. Let the fun begin.