Lest you surmise I’ve been idly twiddling my thumbs for the past 3 months, I’m overdue to lift my head and share an update.

Besides shivering through Victoria’s longest cold snap in over 30 years, we’ve been working on 2 big things:

1. Responding to the first round of city comments on our rezoning application.
2. Completing the Passive House PHPP model.

I’ll cover the first item here. See this post for the Passive House model update.

We received our first round of comments back from the city on December 22 –  four weeks after we’d officially submitted. When I first reviewed the comments, I felt discouraged, as there appeared to be a long list of issues. But Ian, our planning consultant, pointed out this key sentence at the beginning of the letter:

The application as submitted can be considered with the land use policies relevant to the property.

Ian thought this was an excellent response. It is saying, albeit obliquely, that the city is likely to support our application, provided we address their comments. Great!

Ian and I met with the planner responsible for our project to clarify some of the comments. Nothing earth shattering resulted from this meeting, but it was good to have the face time and confirm that we understood their intent.

There were two major comments that affect our design: parking and roof lines.

Parking:

I long for the day when the level of consideration, money and space we devote to places to put our cars do not vastly overshadow the resources we devote toward places for people to actually live. Alas.

The rules around parking are largely inflexible and at odds with our desire to preserve green space on our urban lot. At the same time, the more we push the rules, the longer the timeline drags out and the less certain our outcome becomes, so we’re working toward a reasonable solution that satisfies city engineering but does not compromise our project goals.

We’re required to provide 2 off street parking spots for a duplex (the secondary suite does not require a third spot thankfully). Our neighbourhood has a precedent to allow for front yard parking, which we are invoking to preserve as much back yard space as possible.

One of the unbendable requirements is a 1.0 m setback from the rear of the parking spot to the property line. In the initial review, the engineering department also asked for an additional 1.4 m right of way in the front yard. Why? Because they might one day widen our entire block from the current 15 m street width to the more standard 18 m. Really? We already have sidewalks on both sides, parking on both sides, and boulevard green space between the sidewalks and street. The narrowness of our street also has the desired effect of slowing vehicle speeds. Sounds OK to me.

We do not agree with this request, nor is there any policy requirement that we grant this request. So we’ve decided to provide 1.4 m total, not 1.4 plus 1.0 m, as a compromise that we feel is likely to be accepted. Here’s how the design has evolved as a result:

Before: We were just a hair short of the 1.0 m required between the end of the stall and the property line, but thought we’d give it a shot:

After: We’ve shifted the house back 0.7 m and shortened up the back end of the new addition to achieve the 1.4 m setback at the front without infringing on rear setback limits:

This design change has the added bonus of simplifying the enclosure shape, which is good for Passive House, and we’re pleased with this evolution.

Roof Transition:

The City questioned the transition between old and new roofs. Something wasn’t working, and they rightly pointed out a weakness in our design, if not a simple lack of clarity.

We bandied about the idea of a more dramatic change to the existing hip roof to a gable roof. In addition to being a bolder shape, a gable roof would open up the potential for a loft space, vaulted ceilings and other cool design elements.

But then we thought through the implications – changing most of the roof line, extending the walls up to create the gable; interior redesign to include a stair or other access to the loft space, and potential zoning floor area restrictions we might now bump up against. Besides the fact that our existing house would no longer resemble its original self, there were a whole host of ripple effects that were going to add cost and stretch out the project timeline.

Fortunately, though, as the creative process often goes, this exercise led Mark A to a more elegant solution for the hip roof, which is what we chose to stick with. Here is the before transition from old to new:

And the after:

We’ve been working on these revisions for the past six weeks. When complete, we will submit an updated set, a revised letter to Mayor and Council, and an updated narrative. We may get another round of comments, or if all goes well, we will move on to the meeting of the Committee of the Whole – one step closer to rezoning approval, and we’re holding firm on our current goal to be under construction this summer!