Building permit submitted

Mark submitted our drawing set to the city last Friday. Engineer-stamped and everything. Cause for celebration. HOORAY! Only a year behind schedule. I had some friend remind me today, however, that we're not building a developer home here. Our expectations of how fast a house can be designed and built may be a bit skewed. This ain't that kind of house. We're playing the long game.

Hopefully we'll get a quick turnaround and an open-minded official overseeing our project. We're trying to do something different. And that can be scary to some.

Meanwhile, I'm in Vancouver with our daughters, visiting my sister. It's such a wonderful city. We've often thought about moving to Vancouver. Still do. It's such a wonderful city. Leading the world in healthy living. Building a passive house out here would be 'easy peasy' and a natural fit with the more moderate climate. If we can make it happen in Ottawa, we can make it happen anywhere. 

My dad

So I came across my dad's thesis in our storage locker last week. "Towards an architectural co-existence with the sun". I'm guessing this was around 1977 (?). He was always ahead of his time. Writing about passive principles and solar voltaics. 

He was a strong voice. One could argue, the father of green building in Canada, as we know it today. One of his first employees, Oliver, worked on the Saskatchewan House, renown in Passive House circles. In the early 90s, he was responsible for Ottawa's Minto-built Innova House, one of the country's first R-2000 houses and the first that contributed electricity back to the grid with its solar panels. He also brought the Energy Star program up to Canada and wrote the first iteration of the program. These programs, and their ease of adoption for developers have had large-scale impact on the quality and energy efficiency of the housing industry overall. One off homes, like ours, are great, but if we want real impact, it's made through existing channels and large developers, like Minto. 

When you're a kid, your parents are just your parents. What, they had lives before you came around? Only later in life were we getting glimpses at who my dad was before we came along and what he actually did 9 to 5. I'm so proud. Sure wish he was around to see us through our build. Miss you dad. 

Windows waiting for a home

So there may not be a hole in the ground yet (or even a building permit in hand), but our beautiful Gaulhofer windows have landed on Canadian soil. They are being held for us until the building shell is ready to receive them. The window in front in the photo is the lift-and-slide unit that will let out onto our rooftop patio, and bring in all of that gorgeous sunlight at the top of the house!

The windows are u-PVC with aluminum exterior cladding. We went with Gaulhofer for two reasons: one, the windows are beautiful, robust, extremely well built, and very high performance, and two, because of the exceptional service and attention we have received from Adrian at Herrmann's Timber-Frame Homes. I would highly recommend them to anyone without reservation. Although these are not the most affordable windows, I believe that windows are one element in particular that should not be nickel-and-dimed when building a home. Windows are the weak point in nearly any wall assembly, and are also unique in being one of the only elements of the building envelope that we will touch and interact with regularly as occupants. The feeling of quality to hand when opening and closing the windows will be a signature example of the level of quality I believe all elements of a home should aspire to. Couple this with thermal performance suitable for Passive House applications and you have a wonderful thing. The choice to put Gaulhofer windows in to our home was one of the easier choices we've had to make so far.

A quick progress update: we are expecting the structural engineer's review Monday or Tuesday, which means our permit process can get rolling again...

Trees and doors (and a whole lot more)

The jungle

We have yet to break ground and shrubbery is quickly taking over. Our windows and doors are already on the shipping container, headed over from Euro-ville. When we ordered them, we thought we’d be waiting for them to arrive and not the other way around. Cut us a break would ya??!! It’s our first time building a house…

My grandmother would always tell us kids, as we impatiently asked about dinner, “good things come to those who wait”. Argh. It killed me then and it’s killing me now. I keep channelling Granny as things keep getting delayed. It will be worth it. 

I’m beginning to realize that there is a direct correlation between my blog writing and my emotional and mental state. When I’m excited, and progress is being made, there’s an influx of posts. When the opposite is true, things remain somewhat stagnant. It is my full intent to write as frequently as possible, reporting on all house happenings, and not just when I ‘feel’ like it. There’s just not a whole lot to report yet.

Last week, Mark prepped more drawings (electrical and plumbing) and distributed them to multiple trades for estimates. He accidentally wrote 145 Bayswater on the plans (instead of 105) and has caused some confusion. Our neighbours at 145 have just started building a house on an adjacent empty lot as well. Imagine the surprise of the excavator trade showing up at 145 to see there was already a hole in the ground. Our neighbour texted me to say someone was there scratching his head about the drawings the architect sent him. Du-oh! 

I have been consulting with several tree service teams so we can get the lot cleared and ready to build on. It’s always more complicated than at first thought. There are some trees at the front (closer to the sidewalk) that we have to get permission from the city to cut. And there are some growing over the electrical lines on the alley that we have to get Ottawa Hydro to cut. Then we bring the tree team in. 

Our wonderful orange house neighbours have gone ahead and started some of the clear cutting for us. The large apple tree is down! They want to burn some of the wood in their fireplace. I have requested that they leave some of the larger diameter portions as I would like to mill it and turn it in to something for the house. What that something is, remains to be seen. A powder room counter top? A stair landing in the dining room? TBD. It’s beautiful old-growth apple tree and was in the centre of our lot for 100+ years. It’s a part of the land and needs to be a part of the house.

El stump'o

Good news on the silver maple front: it’s healthy! There is a bit of a concern that we’ll do some damage to the root system when we excavate. The house is far enough back, though, that any damage will be kept to a minimum (we hope!). We’ll probably just do some deep root fertilization to help it get through the year, and look at cosmetic trimming in the future. The canopy is good as-is. No need to unnecessarily add stress to the tree at this stage.

What else? We are meeting someone from Ottawa Hydro at the lot tomorrow morning to discuss how we will connect to the main line. And we are making some big decisions on the backend that we hope to share soon enough. Oh, and did I mention we ordered blue doors? Reflex blue. The bluest of the blues. Couldn’t expect us to go entirely neutral with neighbours as colourful as ours, could you?

That's blue baby! 

Pre-fab no more

We’ve thrown the towel in with our pre-fab builder. The red flags have been flying for a while now. We’ve finally decided that we would feel more comfortable building the good old fashioned way — with site framing. 

Despite this setback, we're feeling much more comfortable with where the build is headed. With tried and tested techniques and builders. We’ve got several enthusiastic and experienced builders anxious to join our team. Mark has had to redesign our wall panels so that they can now be built on site (rather than the factory), using updated modern framing methods. His new wall system is pretty exciting. One in which he might actually like even more than before! He will write a post about it, because it’s worth writing about. Something new that can open up the doors for blah blah blah… (I say blah, but it’s very fascinating. Blah is because I’m not sure how to explain it.)

Now the ball is back in our court. We’ve got structural engineer looking at the new wall system. He should be giving us his feedback and stamp this week so we can finally get the city all of the drawings it needs to issue our permit. Quelle relief that will be.

Assembly instructions

This is how our factory-built house will come together. There will be 15 wall panels, three floor panels (one framed on-site) and three roof panels. Easy peasy — alan key not required. 

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Ikea would be proud...

3 tools to help us stay organized

Binder (above) and OmniPlan timeline (below)

In order for us to successfully GC our house build we’ve got to be mega organized. We’re getting there. We have assembled three key tools:

1. The binder — our physical catch-all for anything and everything house related. Quotes, invoices, business cards, drawings — you name it.
2. The project plan — we’re using OmniPlan for the project scheduling — to help us visualize tasks and timelines with its fancy dance Gantt charts
3. The master budget spreadsheet — we’re not just using any old spreadsheet here — our spreadsheet is on steroids. Mark has created a user-friendly and powerful Filemaker database. It keeps track of all quotes and costs, compares numbers against our budgeted numbers and will act as our main digital repository.

There may not be a hole in the ground yet, but we’re getting the ducks lined up so that we can *hopefully* hit the ground running once we get a green light.

GC’ing our own home

It's not a Meghan and Mark blog unless awkward photos are involved

You may have noticed that our site has been rather silent over the past month. That’s because we have been contemplating and figuring out how exactly we are going to build it, and equally importantly, how we are going to pay for it. After much deliberation, we have decided that we are going to take on the general contractor (GC) role of our build. It’s not something we were that keen to take on, seeing how are lives are more than busy as-is, but we see it as our only choice. It is the one thing that will dramatically cut costs for us (by at least 25%—if we don't screw it up). While we appreciate the service and value that a real General Contractors can bring to a job, it’s just not in the cards for us. Besides, we like to get our hands dirty.

It will be an invaluable learning experience for Mark, as the architect. Speaking of acquiring new skills as an architect, he has also taken it upon himself to draw up the structural panels that determine how our house will come together using a panelized pre-fabricated system. This is the step that has been stalling us and is what the city has been waiting for. Our house is deceivingly complicated and was causing some trouble for our builder. Rather than wait, Mark ploughed ahead. It was a worthy exercise to undertake by the sounds of things. Understanding the structure and where each and every truss is, he can see that moving a window half an inch to the left means that the house becomes significantly easier to build. He can then adjust the design accordingly. Neat stuff. Hopefully he’ll write about this.

So there you have it. We are the builders. Our blog will become ever the more fascinating. Now that the structural is near-complete, we should have everything the city requires for permit by the end of the week. We’re starting to get excited again.