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The Indelicate (and comforting) Sounds of Progress

August 24, 2019 by clove Leave a Comment

It feels good to be moving again. Interactive is hustling to get as close to completion as possible before the end of October, when we have to be out of our rental.

Unfortunately, the stop work delay has led to a crew shortage that we are doing our best to alleviate through Matt’s efficient contributions, and sub-contracting out a couple of tasks that Interactive would normally do themselves.

We’ve been focused on making quick decisions on final orders for things like flooring, tile, lighting, exterior siding, appliances, and millwork. It all has to be ordered now.

We continue to face hurdles with the City. The fact that we have a unique “duplex plus suite” zoning has caused all manner of headache, since this arrangement does not currently exist in the eyes of the building code. Duplex? No problem! Single family + secondary suite? No problem! Duplex + secondary suite? Um…

At the last electrical inspection, the inspector said we needed 4 hydro meters for the property: one for each unit (including the secondary suite which can only ever be a rental given our zoning), plus a separate meter for any shared services between the two suites. Huh? The City ultimately deferred to BC Hydro, citing an obscure memo that seemed to suggest that having multiple meters was one possible avenue, but did not say we couldn’t have less (we’re planning for two, one for each strata unit). I called BC Hydro and spoke with someone who thankfully offered to write an email confirming that from their perspective, we could install 1 or 50 meters – it was entirely up to us who pays for the electricity.

The City has also decided that from a fire and life safety perspective, we have a triplex on our hands. Cue noncombustible siding and extensive fire separations between main and secondary suites. The BC Building Code has put out a revision for public comment that specifically addresses duplexes + suites, but who knows how long that will take to move through the various stages of approval. Certainly won’t happen before the end of October. So we find ourselves only pushing back when a requirement is clearly ludicrous, and sucking up the rest in the interest of forward movement.

With each successive visit to the project over the past few weeks, I feel a little bit more excited and a little less afraid that the project will fail. I am allowing myself to believe that this is all going to come together in the end and we will achieve what we set out to – albeit down a much more circuitous road than we had expected. I am allowing myself to imagine ourselves living in our new space and unpacking our things without having to keep all the boxes. I’m fantasizing about what we’ll do with all our free time. Month-long trips exploring northern Canada and upper Vancouver Island! Haida Gwaii! New York City! Belgium for cyclocross! Gardening! Writing! Ah, dare to dream…

And now for some photos!

Here’s what’s been happening outside:

We had to add a whole bunch of these metal straps for seismic restraint between the two units

Then patch over the straps with membrane to restore the integrity of the air barrier

Starting on the exterior insulation (6″ of Roxul Cavityrock)

Future location of electric vehicle charging station!

A start on what will be double strapping (vertical then horizontal) to attach cladding and create the drainage/ventilation gap

Moving inside…

Zehnder’s new ComfoFlex woven fibreglass air distribution tubing

All tubes begin or end at the Heat Recovery Ventilator’s closet. HRV to come.

Insulation upstairs. R-14 on the underside of the roof – the rest goes outside

This is all starting to look very house-like

It’s Our Bleeping Future

July 5, 2019 by clove 2 Comments

Complementing my sporadic fears that our project may be derailed by any number of manifested risks, I’ve been nursing a nagging feeling that I need to do more to stop our climate crisis. Sure, I do what I can to make conscious choices each day about what I eat, what I buy, how I get around, and how I spend my time. It’s not enough.

The other week, I read about our federal government’s decision to approve (again) the Trans Mountain pipeline, still without the consent of First Nations along the route and (I would argue) the majority of Canadians. The next day I learned about the mass die-off of the grey whales as they migrate north along the Pacific coast.

At the end of that week, I took an advanced Passive House course with RDH’s own Monte Paulsen, during which he reminded us what happens to our brains when the carbon dioxide level in our environment increases in the ‘do nothing’ future climate scenario. Simply put, background atmospheric CO2 levels will hit the range that has been demonstrated to compromise brain function. This is the air we breathe! Contemplating this potential future, my course-mate and fellow parent Matt turned to me and said, “The stuff makes me want to cry.”

I knew exactly how he felt. I’ve lately been brought to tears by what I see happening around me. I don’t even read the news most days and when I do, it invariably triggers a state of mourning and despair that seems to be simmering just below the surface. I’m mourning the state of our planet and the sorry state of our politics that continues to either do nothing or not do enough.

When I’m done crying, I find things I can do to stave off the despair.

I attended the No Consent march to protest Trudeau’s decision and show support for the Tiny House Warriors, an indigenous women led group that is building and setting tiny houses in the path of the planned pipeline. The group is also resisting a 1000-man “man camp” that will be constructed in their territory; an oil and gas industry practice that has been linked to an increase in violence against aboriginal women. Lose lose as far as I can tell.

I spoke at Victoria City Hall to offer solutions to dramatically improve the performance and resiliency of our existing buildings and to support the City’s work following their declaration of a Climate Emergency.

Before that, Matt, Mila-Kate and I joined the student strike for climate justice. I donated to the Dogwood Society and the Ancient Forest Alliance. I wrote letters to our provincial and federal representatives to tell them that I won’t vote for anyone who supports continued oil and gas expansion. I wrote to the BC government to ask them to stop logging the old growth forests.

I know there’s more I can do. I see signs of hope in the growing voices for change, but I’m angry that those who have held power for so long have used it to destroy our planet for their own short term gain. I fear for our children’s future. I grieve for the threatened forests and oceans and all the creatures (including us humans) that depend on them.

How can this possibly be an acceptable future?

It is not acceptable. So even though I mourn, I will continue to do as much as I can to create an acceptable future. Because what else is there to do?

It’s Unanimous (Again)

June 28, 2019 by clove 4 Comments

We got through public hearing #2. Phewf.

I had considered not presenting at all this time around (it is optional). Surely this was a no-brainer, right? Surely it’s in everyone’s best interest to approve our new Development Permit and just finish the project?

But then I watched the Committee of the Whole video (this is the meeting at which Council hears staff’s report and votes on whether to put the project forward for public hearing). They all voted in favour of proceeding, but one councilor was very critical of the design and suggested that it was only approved because of the existing house and with that constraint removed, the whole design could have been reconsidered (not in any practical way, but that’s another matter).

This was his perspective, but the sentiment at the first public hearing was extremely positive and it wasn’t just because we were re-using the existing house. Nevertheless, I realized that once again we had to do everything we could to ensure a positive outcome, especially since so many of the current councilors are new. I invited neighbours to write letters and a couple came out in support (thank you Gail and Len!). And I prepared another presentation in spite of my intense fatigue over the whole process.

After my presentation, the same councilor reiterated his negative opinion about the design and concluded by saying he hoped this sort of thing never happened again. Thankfully, the other councilors spoke more supportively and ultimately they all voted in favour.

So we’re back in business. I’ve mentally shifted gears back to critical path decision making. We also got notice that we will likely have to be out of our rental place by the end of October, so we are pushing hard for completion in 4 months – not impossible, but a challenge to be sure!

Here’s where we’re at:

Matt’s installed all of the clips that will secure the cladding to the framing (with 6″ Roxul Cavityrock insulation between)

Making Lemonade (and Cabinets)

May 17, 2019 by clove Leave a Comment

I am convinced that one must be a dogged optimist to be a developer, as the actual completion of a project is simply the cumulative result of having solved innumerable problems along the way. If one stops believing that each new problem has a solution, the project dies.

And so it is with this spirit that we have made the most of our time waiting (and waiting…) for our new Development Permit. Here are a couple of big items we’ve been working on:

Interior Design

We hired an interior designer (welcome to the team, Lisa Dunsmuir of Step One Design!). We’d originally designed around the existing interior walls of our house because we were going to keep them. With that constraint gone, Lisa did a major redo that we think is a big improvement. She still had plenty of constraints to work with, mind you, given that all the windows, doors and ground level plumbing connections were already installed.

The biggest change to our half was to create a more distinct “front of house” (kitchen, living, entry) and “back of house” (bedrooms, bath) on the upper floor:

She also reworked our “mom suite” layout to be more functional:

On the other half, the biggest change was to rejig the upper floor to add an ensuite bath for the master bedroom (which we’re told people like):

We are now in the process of finalizing all finishes (carpet, tile, flooring, toilets, sinks, lighting etc). This has taken a surprising amount of time and now that we’ve gotten through most of it, I am grateful that we won’t be making these choices on the fly and trying to visualize how it will all work together on our own. The number of options in any one finish category is mind-boggling, and having Lisa funnel us into a just a few good ones has been incredibly valuable. Once we do get back to work on site, Lisa’s spec book and detailed drawings will allow the crew and contractors to move a lot faster.

Cabinets

Matt is now a cabinet maker! He’d allocated a chunk of his time over the winter and spring to work on our project. Since we can’t work on the actual house, we figured we could get a jump on interior finishes by making all of the mill work for our half. Working off Lisa’s drawings, Matt’s making the cabinet boxes out of plywood and will finish the drawer/door fronts and cabinet ends with processed fir from our old house. I think it will look beautiful. Here are some images of the process:

Matt’s garage workshop at our interim rental house

Matt runs the 2x4s through the table saw to cut them down to 1″ thickness and expose the straight grain, and then glues them together to make a 12″ wide panel

He then runs the panel through the surface planer to a 3/4″ thickness

Here he has glued two 12″ panels together to create a wider panel

sample of a completed (unfinished) panel

panels for side of lower cabinets and fridge cabinet

Stuck in a Kafka Novel

April 19, 2019 by clove 8 Comments

Help, we’re stuck in a Kafka novel!

Kafkaesque:
: of, relating to, or suggestive of Franz Kafka or his writings especially : having a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality // Kafkaesque bureaucratic delays
…the word Kafkaesque is often applied to bizarre and impersonal administrative situations where the individual feels powerless to understand or control what is happening.
(Merriam-Webster)

As described here, we chose to change the roof shape of the ‘existing’ half of the duplex to a gable roof. This change required that we go through a Delegated Development Permit process.

A Delegated Development Permit (DDP) allows staff to review and approve “minor” changes to a Development Permit, which is a more streamlined process than applying for a completely new DP. We evaluated the timeline, cost and benefits and chose to go ahead, submitting the application in October. The first round of comments from staff were supportive of the roof change, but (of course) pointed out a few other minor items that would require a resubmission.

After we resubmitted in November (and were well into framing construction), the code inspector assigned to our project flagged the fact that we referred to existing structure in the Building Permit drawings but that there appeared to be no existing structure. We explained to the city planner that the design was the same, except that we had replaced existing with new framing (read the rationale here). Development Permits are intended to govern form and character, and this change had no impact on either. As such, it hadn’t occurred to us to talk with the planning department prior to dis-assembling. Apparently we were mistaken.

This revelation kicked us out of the DDP process. City staff said they were not comfortable approving this ‘major‘ change without council input and therefore instructed us that we needed to apply for a new Development Permit before we can continue work. Queue stop work order.

Surely this is not the first time that the late discovery of structural deficiencies has led to a change in approach, and surely applying for an entirely new development permit is not the only path? They said if we’d come to them before we dis-assembled the existing framing, they would have been able to work something out. Like what, keep a wall so we can still call it “existing”? The DP application form says to expect a 3-6 month process. How is that in any way reasonable for a project that is mid-construction?

Upon hearing this judgement, I did what any analytical person would do: I poured over the Local Government Act and Land Use Procedures Bylaw to understand the policy that was informing staff’s direction. I discovered two important things:

“Minor” and “Major” are not defined anywhere, so it’s up to someone’s subjective interpretation of what is a minor versus a major change. In our opinion, a change that can be documented by revising a couple of notes in the drawing package is a minor change – particularly when it has zero impact on form and character.

the Local Government Act provides a mechanism to appeal a planning department’s decision to deny a DDP application. The appeal process would mean that we could directly address Council and ask them to either uphold or overrule staff’s decision.

So when city staff rejected our DDP application, citing that they were uncomfortable proceeding without Council’s input, we invoked our right to appeal. Our sole interest was to resolve any concerns quickly so that we could continue with construction. A 3-6 month wait could be lethal to our small project.

A few days after notifying staff of our appeal, we received a letter from the city solicitor’s office saying that we could not in fact appeal. This is worth quoting:

You getting this? Neither are we. I guess that’s why they’re the lawyers and we’re not.

We’ve discussed this process at length with our planning consultant and we remain convinced that we have the policy backing to support our position and our right to appeal. How can staff’s direction be anything but a rejection of our application?

Unfortunately, our case is muddied by the perception that there is a lot of wanton demolition going on in our city by developers. The Acting Director of Planning said in our first meeting that just the week prior, they had a similar case come forward, and they seemed intent on following the same process for both, irrespective of the unique circumstances of each.

It became clear that City staff were not going to budge, despite many conversations and correspondence to address their stated concerns. Our last ditch attempt was to present directly to council at a public hearing (any citizen who submits the proper notice can address Council for up to 5 minutes). If staff were saying they weren’t comfortable moving forward without Council’s input, we would ask Council directly for their input.

I sent a letter to all councillors in advance of the public hearing to provide context and give them the best opportunity to consider our case and ideally, to pass a motion to allow staff to complete our DDP application. We had also exchanged several emails with the Mayor, who seemed willing to do what she could.

I gave my presentation, after which Mayor Helps thanked me and moved on to the next speaker with no further discussion.

We stuck around until the end of the meeting, and Ian (our planning consultant) had a discussion with the Acting Director and the city’s solicitor to better understand their rationale. We remain convinced that the solicitor’s advice is flawed, and listening to him speak left me with the impression that he just wants to be right. But to take up the matter further and engage our own legal advice would only mean more cost and time that we don’t have. We later learned that Mayor Helps had gone to staff earlier that day to ask if Council could in fact pass the motion we had requested, and was told that they could not. The Mayor seemed genuinely interested in helping our case, but was prevented from doing so by staff following the advice of their solicitor.

So we reluctantly raised the white flag (having lost nearly 2 months to the false hope that we could find another, faster resolution) and submitted a new Development Permit (complete with $3,000 application fee to review drawings that have already been reviewed). We are now well into Month 4 of the stop work order as we inch along the City’s review process, with an estimated delay-related cost of $30,000 so far.

Who does this serve? Why is the City not doing everything they possibly can to help projects that add housing and that are wholly consistent with both our climate action imperative and the City’s Official Community Plan? It’s counter-productive, non-collaborative, reactive, punitive, and mired in a procedure over which no one seems to have any control. I understand the need for policies and procedures, but when they’re just ticking boxes, there is a real cost (and a lost opportunity) that they either don’t appreciate or believe they are powerless to change.

The one voice of reason in all of this has been the manager of inspections, who allowed us to finish wrapping the house prior to enforcing the stop work order, so that the structure is protected from the elements. He has also since allowed us to complete the rest of the roof assembly to resolve some moisture and durability issues.

Stay tuned for a new public hearing. If you feel inclined, you are welcome to write a letter of support to mayorandcouncil@victoria.ca. And for those readers for whom this all sounds familiar, watch for the launch of our new city approvals survivors’ group!

Here are some photos of where we’ve left things. While we wait, we can all at least appreciate our beautifully colourful Cascadia fibreglass entry doors.

Thanks for reading!

It’s All About the People

January 20, 2019 by clove 2 Comments

This stuff doesn’t get built by robots or aliens. At least not on our project, and at least as far as we can tell.

Aliens or not, the crew at Interactive have been exemplary. I continue to be amazed by what they accomplish in any given week.

A few of the crew from Interactive, plus Matt! L-R: Matt, Josh, Pat, Mitch, Brittany. They’re not just smiling because the brownies I brought them were so delicious; these are beautiful people!

If a project manager was a super hero, he’d be like Mike!

Probably because this is the first time Matt and I have done this, I feel a special kind of amazement seeing the crew transform our two dimensional drawings into three dimensions on site.

We had the location survey done recently – this is when the survey company checks the location of the building and issues a certificate verifying that it’s where it’s supposed to be. Russ, owner of Interactive, said casually, “Looks like we once again managed to put the house where it goes.” He’s done this a lot. To me, it’s all still a bit magical.

Construction Progress

December 28, 2018 by clove Leave a Comment

The crew at Interactive continues to impress with their quick progress and adaptiveness in the face of driving rain and near gale force wind storms. As they broke for a well deserved holiday, here’s how far we’ve come.

Prepping the low slope side for its roof; sheathing in progress; roof trusses installed in the sloped roof half

Window bucks partially installed; attempting to protect the openings from wind and rain to be ready for window delivery

Prepping the window rough openings with impermeable membrane at the sill

Interactive spent a couple of days preparing the window rough openings, then managed to get all of the windows and all but two of the doors placed in one day

Cascadia Universal series windows and doors, with very low-e Cardinal triple glazing

Here is the same progression, viewing from the front of the house

Installing Soprema Sopraseal Stick VP, our waterproofing and air barrier

Framing Progress

November 16, 2018 by clove 2 Comments

Framing has to be one of the most satisfying stages in a building’s construction. After feeling like we spent a dog’s age underground – not to mention the few years that came before we touched the merest speck of dirt – framing progress is fast and visible. We are now seeing plans on paper being rendered in three dimensions. Yeeha.

After getting this far a couple weeks ago:

front view

back view

Last week’s highlight was taking the steps up to the second floor:

view from the top, looking east

Then there was the thrill of standing where our kitchen will be, and then looking out the window opening of our new bedroom:

view from the front, this week

view from the back

Master Class in Construction Sequencing

November 1, 2018 by clove 2 Comments

Things are really zipping along on-site, thanks to some ingenious sequencing work by our Project Manager, Mike.

Here is the progress update in photos and a video.

Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) foundation walls are wrapped with self-adhered waterproofing membrane. 4″ of additional rigid foam insulation is being installed on the outside of the ICFs for a total of just over 6″ insulation on the exterior side:

Here we can see the exterior rigid insulation on the foundation walls and 6″ of rigid insulation topping off (and surrounding) the footings:

View from the back yard:

Below grade plumbing is installed; gravel is laid and protected with poly in preparation for pouring the below slab spray foam:

Spray foam was applied on Monday and Tuesday of last week (in four “lifts”, or separate applications):

We added 6.75″ total for R-40 below slab. The product is Heatlok Soya, which claims a more environmentally friendly blowing agent than previous generation products. It’s very sensitive to weather during application and curing, but the weather gods shined their temperate, dry smiles on us this week.

Spot checking the total thickness:

Here’s a short video of the application process:

Tubing was then installed for the in-slab hydronic radiant heating system. This was Thursday:

Tubing spacing is ~12″ in most areas; tighter in the baths, and generally more widely spaced than in a non-Passive House due to the low heating load.

And by Friday we had a poured slab – two slabs, in fact; one for each side:

We kept it watered between weekend rain showers to encourage an even cure:

I think this means we can no longer call our project “the hole”. If we aren’t careful, pretty soon we’ll be calling it a house.

The Quest for Simplicity

September 29, 2018 by clove Leave a Comment

As our beloved hole continues to take shape, the more technical among our readers may be wondering how things are looking on the Passive House modeling side.

As currently modeled in the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP), we are just squeaking by on the certification requirements. We had a Design Stage Review done by our certifier, Brittany, around the time we submitted for our Building Permit in the spring. The Design Stage Review is meant to be done before we start digging a big hole; and ideally, to give us some assurance that if things go according to plan, we are likely to achieve certification. Or, conversely, we would know early enough if any bigger changes were required. The review left me feeling confident in our design but with a long list of comments to respond to. Many of these comments involved refining conservative placeholder values for things like thermal bridging.

If I’m perfectly frank, I’d rather have a tooth pulled than spend a whole Saturday on PHPP updates. But there’s also the fact that things are still in flux, and while I want to know the energy impact of design changes, I am resistant to the notion that PHPP is our ultimate decision maker. There are design questions that absolutely impact the passive house model (and its predicted energy use), but are also influenced by other factors like practicality, cost, and aesthetics. PHPP doesn’t care about any of these things.

One thing that the model and I both care a lot about is simplicity. My strong inclination is to remove design complications, which by extension, tend to also remove modeling complications.

Here are the design questions we have been working through over the last while. We’re tackling each in the priority that Interactive needs answers to keep the project on schedule. I will tweak values in PHPP to test the impact, but will officially update them when we are satisfied that we have made good choices based on all of our criteria. With a bit of synergistic karma, our quest for simplicity will also lead to a certifiable passive house.

Roof Shape: Since we have to rebuild it anyway, we’ve chosen to do away with the hip roof on the ‘existing’ half. It’s a dramatic aesthetic improvement in my opinion but also a major simplification.

new gable roof (with the same floor plan)

old hip roof

Modeling the original hip roof was a less than satisfying experience. I could not completely capture the intersection of multiple hip roof slopes with the low slope roof of the new half using simple geometry and the dimensions provided on the drawings. And Interactive would have to build this! A gable roof is so much simpler to model and build.

The downside of this change is that the City needs to approve it. We are told it will only take a few weeks, but we have to submit a modified Development Permit package for the planning department’s review AND a revised Building Permit Package for the code inspection side. Good times.

Windows and Doors: We’re confirming final details of our Cascadia Universal Series fiberglass window and door order, which includes committing to the Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC) for the glazing. This is the value that determines how much heat is allowed through the windows versus reflected away. Higher is better in the model because it allows in more ‘free heat’, but lower is better to prevent overheating, and I think lower is ultimately the better way to go given our climate trends. I’m leaning toward using the lower value (Cardinal 360/180) on the south and west windows and the higher (Cardinal 270/180) on the north and east.

Much more fun than picking a SHGC for glazing is picking custom colours for our front entry doors. Thanks to our kindergartener’s astute design sense, there will be a purple door!

Ventilation: Each half of the duplex will have distinct heat recovery ventilation systems. We had been mulling over whether to pay for the more expensive Paul Novus units that have better heat recovery than the Zehnder units. This makes a difference of about 1 kWh/m2 heating demand, which is not insignificant when the maximum allowable is 15. I’ve got the less efficient Zehnder units in the model now, but this dilemma is likely to resolve itself even more favorably when the new Zehnder Q-series units become available in early 2019. They have vastly improved efficiency at much lower cost than the Paul units. Whoopee.

Heating and Domestic Hot Water Heating: We have chosen to go with Sanden CO2 heat pumps for domestic hot water heating and in-slab radiant hydronic heating on the ground floors. These are air-to-water heat pumps that use CO2 as the heat transfer medium instead of something like R410-A. This technology has so much potential because most other refrigerants have several hundred to several thousand times the global warming potential of CO2. And the thing that doesn’t get talked about (and as far as I can tell has not been studied) is that typical refrigerant-based systems leak refrigerant like crazy. Anecdotal evidence suggests that 80% of the refrigerant that gets added to a system leaks out into the atmosphere.

The limitation of CO2-based systems is that they can only do heating, whereas other refrigerant based systems can provide both heating and cooling. We’re not currently planning to add mechanical cooling and we’re hoping that by the time the climate here becomes California, we’ll have sufficient shade trees to limit our exposure.

I’ve chatted with a few people who have experience with a Sanden “combi” system, including Peter J from Cascadia Architects. He has a functioning system in his Passive House home and shared a few tips for making sure it works properly without overheating the house – like heating the slab overnight and then shutting it off during the day and having a couple of supplemental heat sources for the few very cold days.

And further to the simplicity theme: by using polished concrete floors on the ground floors, we can embed the hydronic tubing; do one concrete pour and save on other floor finishes. It also makes for a clean modern look that we quite like.

And a Bunch of Little Things: I’m keeping a running markup of all the little things that occur to us the more we stare at the drawings – like moving a toilet location; combining the laundry and mechanical rooms to remove a wall and a door; shifting a window so there is room for a single bed along one wall. So basically thinking carefully about what it will be like to live in the space and making sure it works.

We’re quickly approaching the point where we’ve firmed up the bigger system choices. I will then do another update of PHPP, after which we’ll have a very good idea how the numbers will work out. Our decision-making will then shift toward things like kitchen cabinets and countertops and away from things with an appreciable impact on energy demand.

Interior Design

Cabinets

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