Blog – Page 8

Early Meeting with the City Planner

October 9, 2015 by clove 1 Comment

Yesterday I met with the City of Victoria planner responsible for small lot subdivisions in our area. The purpose of this early meeting was to get a sense for any real or perceived barriers to approving our project from the planning department’s perspective. After we go through the community consultation process and submit our official rezoning application, it works its way through various engineering and planning departments and the planning department ultimately makes a recommendation for Council’s consideration.

When it comes to giving guidance around rezoning, planning staff are tasked with communicating what is allowed by already established zoning classes. They are unlikely to express support for a custom zoning proposal. A lot of work has gone into the creation and evolution of existing zoning and to have every developer come along and create something new would defeat the whole purpose of zoning regulations. The purpose of this early meeting was therefore to read between the lines and to get a sense for openness to our proposal.

The first thing the planner said, having given the schematic drawings a quick glance, was “this looks challenging.”

He felt that the biggest challenge was the addition of a suite to a small lot property (which is what the existing house would become after subdivision). It isn’t allowed in the existing small lot zoning, which is already very well established. It even has its own Design Guidelines.

There was plenty of nuance in our in-person conversation, including an acknowledgement of the importance of neighbourhood opinion. The nuance was absent from his follow-up email, which encouraged us to rework the project to meet existing zoning (i.e. no suite).

Although it feels like a rejection, I would be a fool to be surprised by this response. We already know that adding a suite in a small lot house is unprecedented. We also know that we need to creatively add housing in the most walkable neighbhourhoods of our city; to increase affordable housing and options for aging-in-place, and to reduce the impact of our buildings and lifestyles.

I debriefed with our planning guru Ian Scott and he said that he was expecting the planning department to say no, and that there was also a strong possibility that planning would recommend against the project in their report to council. The prospect that our project’s approval could come down to a final face-off between City staff and Council feels risky.

However, Ian also said that none of the current zoning regulations has been updated to reflect the goals of the Official Community Plan (read post). So what it comes down to is whether we want – or can afford– to stick out our necks.

We would love to set a new precedent and to show what is possible with good design. And yet…are we willing to take the risk – the potential added expense and time to redesign and resubmit after a rejected application- in order to be the first to do something new?

I was anxious to get going on our detailed design, but I still don’t know what many of our neighbhours think – particularly about the suite question. Our next logical step, then, is to talk with our neighbours about more of the specifics – show the renderings and gather their opinions about adding the suite, and then see how everything sits.

I think that if we can get a consensus that the project is very likely to get approved by both our neighbhours and city planning if we exclude the suite, then we would move toward that option.

Official Community Plan Primer

September 30, 2015 by clove Leave a Comment

A narrative of how our proposed development aligns with the goals of the City’s Official Community Plan (OCP) and our local area plan will be a key piece of our rezoning application. So let’s see how our proposed project stacks up under the lens of the City of Victoria’s OCP and the Gonzales Neighbhourhood Community Plan, both of which will dictate the limits of our project.

Here is the City’s vision for itself in 2041:

Pretty general stuff, but so far so good. We believe our project will inspire innovation toward community resiliency and will build on our city’s exceptional quality of life through its walkable neighbhourhoods of unique character.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the subject area goals that are most relevant to our development.

Goals for Land Development and Management:

We’re adding a modest amount of new housing to an over-sized single family lot that is spitting distance from shops, bus lines, schools, parks, and bike routes. We’re not building that economic activity, but we are adding residents that will support this model of development.

Goals for Climate Change and Energy:

We’re rebuilding an existing home rather than tearing it down. This existing home and the new home we add next to it will be designed to consume very little energy, and will rely solely on solar PV and non-fossil fuel based electricity. We will also consider material choices, favouring local, durable, and low embodied energy materials wherever possible.

So looks like we are aligned on the broad goals of the OCP. We need to dig deeper to see what it says more specifically about the Traditional Residential area that characterizes our location.

Here’s the General Development Guidance for Urban and Traditional Residential areas:

So now we have to look at the Urban Place Guidelines for Traditional Residential:

We’re proposing ground oriented buildings 2-storeys or less, with front and rear yards, thoughtful landscaping, off street parking, one single family home + one single family home with secondary suite, and floor space ratios of 0.5 and 0.6. So, check, check and check.

Things are looking good on the OCP front. What about in relation to the Gonzales Neighbhourhood Community Plan? This document is older than the OCP, published in 2002, so some elements may be outdated, but we still want to see if we are aligned with the plan’s overarching philosophy.

This Plan has three specific guidelines that most directly relate to our proposal:

3.2.3 Retain and maintain the existing viable single family and detached housing stock.
3.2.4 Retain existing, and where appropriate, encourage the provision of additional, affordable housing, e.g. “secondary suites” in houses.
3.2.5 Maintain and enhance a diversity of housing in Gonzales to meet the needs of a variety of people with different needs and incomes.

Subsequent to the writing of this plan, the R1-G2 Gonzales Small Lot District zone was created, which supports in concept what we are proposing. See this post for a rundown of where we diverge. If we were not adding a suite, we could meet the R1-G2 zoning with variances – the addition of a suite to a small lot house kicks it into a custom zone based on R1-G2.

Talking with our Neighbours – Part 1

September 14, 2015 by clove Leave a Comment

Yesterday I sat in the kitchen of our neighbhours immediately south of us and introduced our project over homemade ginger cookies. Mary and John* have lived in their house since the 1950s and are in many ways the heart of the neighbourhood. They know all the stories. They know everyone who lives on the block and everyone who used to live on the block. They know about the developments that have come and the ones that have been pushed away. They built onto their own tiny bungalow as their family grew to five kids. Mary showed me two photos in their front hall: one of the original 1940s bungalow and another with the first addition that John built himself in the evenings after work.

Given their status and history with the neighbhourhood, as well as the fact that they would be right next to our proposed new house, I felt they needed to be one of the very first I approached about our plans.

Mary’s first reaction was to say, “Oh, you’ll have a fight on your hands!” Something about ‘those small lot projects’ sounded like a sticking point for many in the neighbhourhood. She told a few stories of how the neighbhours had mobilized against past developments. She mentioned one fellow a block over who originally wanted to subdivide. All the neighbhours came out in protest, and in the end he built a duplex in the style of a heritage house, which Mary thought was beautiful. Many houses in the neighbourhood have been added to, or have been divided into suites over the years.

I asked Mary if she could describe the basis for resistance to past projects. “It’s change,” she said.

After feeling buoyed by my recent meeting with Ian Scott, I now feel deflated again. I realize I could do a better job of describing the project’s benefits, yet I don’t want to throw a big list out there the first time we talk. Neither do I want to have a fight on my hands. I want to have constructive conversations with our neighbours; to understand the issues and address them as best we can. This is our home too, after all, and we envision ourselves being here for the long-term.

And frankly, our property is ripe for development. It is the third property in from Oak Bay Avenue. It is the first house after the large mixed use building on the corner and the 6-unit townhouse next door. The house itself would have little value to a pure investor developer. Something will happen with this lot. A pure developer would surely tear down the existing house and fill the lot with as much square footage as possible. If we can accept that something will happen to our property, what is the best possible outcome? We think it’s a modest increase in density that maintains the neighbourhood’s single family character. We think it’s breathing new life into a solid 100+ year old home so it goes strong for another 100+ years. As a bonus, it will use a fraction of the energy it uses now.

We also think it’s creating a showcase – one new and one existing – of healthy, comfortable, ultra-low energy, high quality homes that go well beyond what is required by code. We want to show what is possible if we push ourselves a little to consider benefits beyond financial return and quality indicators beyond countertop material.

We think it’s even things like putting some thought and effort into the landscaping design so that people enjoy walking by and stopping for a chat.

So that’s me on my soapbox for today. I must maintain my enthusiasm, and, as always…be patient.

*Names changed to respect privacy.

Getting (Back) to the Basics

September 11, 2015 by clove 2 Comments

Current side yard setback with townhouse to the north

Our architect Mark A and I had our heads down for a while fiddling with house placement, window placement and property line locations to somehow wrestle our two houses (new + old) into existing R1-G2 small lot zoning allowances. We were doing weird things like removing all windows from the new house’s north face and sliding the property line to the very edge of the new house. The existing house simply doesn’t fit and I knew that, but even still, I started to despair that we were wanting to do too much with our lot and it was never going to fly.

So I lifted my head and sought an infusion of fresh perspective from our planing guru Ian Scott.

We met for coffee and went through the current plans. Ian offered some reassuring words that restored my confidence in our project; a key one being that window placement variances are commonly sought and granted for small lot properties, especially on the two facing walls of the subject homes. Mark A and I were fretting about the zoning requirement of 8’ (2.4 m) minimum setback to the property line to have windows in main living spaces like bedrooms. To meet this and keep a few windows on the south face of the existing house, we shifted the property line between the houses so far south that the new house’s lot became too small to meet the R1-G2 lot size requirement.

So, here are my key lessons from Ian:

Changes to lot size trigger rezoning
Window placement that varies from zoning requirements is a variance (i.e. not triggering rezoning, which is preferred wherever possible)
Setbacks that vary from zoning requirements are variances
Lot frontage that varies from zoning requirements is a variance
Site coverage that varies from zoning requirements is a variance

Ian’s suggestions made everything simple again:

Place windows strategically to protect privacy and apply for variances
Move the property line between the houses back to the middle of the shared driveway so that the lot sizes for both properties meet R1-G2 requirements.
The new house will apply for R1-G2 zoning with variances
The existing house will apply for a custom zone on the basis that we are adding a suite
Lot coverage for the existing house will also be a variance, on the basis that we are dealing with an existing building form.

Ian also helped me return to the key elements that define the project and that will communicate our intent and the project’s benefits to the neighbourhood, the community association, and ultimately, city staff and council.

Here’s how they’re shaping up:

The lot is large enough to support two small lot homes, per the R1-G2 Zone Gonzales Small Lot District. This zoning was developed based on the Gonzales Neighbourhood Community Plan established in 2002.
The proposed development supports several goals of the City’s Official Community Plan (OCP) by:
- adding “gentle” density while respecting the single family character of the neighbhourhood
- reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions through the creation of high performing but modestly sized housing options in a popular, walkable location for families
- modifying the existing home to facilitate multi-generational living and aging in place
The addition of the new ultra low energy home will finance extensive energy upgrades to the existing air leaky home and as a package, therefore, provide multiple benefits to the community in a way that retains and restores existing neighbourhood character.
The shared driveway allows retention of the existing street tree and power pole, and will preserve the current level of available street parking.
Retaining and improving the existing house conserves materials and preserves the basic shape and character of the home while significantly improving its comfort, energy performance, and useful life.

See this post for a more detailed rundown of key elements of the City’s OCP as it relates to our project.

Passive House, Net Zero, or just a Pretty Good House?

August 16, 2015 by clove 2 Comments

Here’s the lowdown on our current favourite approaches to achieve our project’s energy performance goals. We’re more interested in the principles than checking boxes or getting a plaque, and want to pick and choose what will work best for us. (And yes, there are other important goals like low water consumption, healthy and local materials, and creating something beautiful, but today we’re talking energy.)

Passive House
Net Zero House
Pretty Good House

Passive House:

The Passive House standard has 3 key performance requirements:

Annual heating demand <= 15 kWh/M2/year. This is a 70-90% reduction over what most houses use for heating.
Total primary energy demand <= 120 kWh/M2/year (this is a measure of total energy consumption, including the energy required to generate and transport the energy from the source, using a single source energy factor for all of North America)
Air tightness, as Air Changes per Hour (ACH) <= 0.6 ACH50, as measured by a blower door test. This is about 4 times more airtight than a typical new house.

Here’s a snappy video that explains the fundamentals of the Passive House approach:

The basic concept of the Passive House standard is to focus first on the structure itself: highly insulated foundation, exterior walls, roof; airtight enclosure, and high performing windows – and then supplement with mechanical heating and/or cooling systems. So we reduce demand as much as possible first before looking at efficient ways to provide the remaining energy we need. Mechanical ventilation is also required to maintain air quality.

The requirements are performance based (focused on the end result rather than prescribing certain systems or building elements), but they do lead us to certain choices that we must make in order to meet the requirements, such as triple pane windows, very high performing heat recovery ventilators (HRVs), and thermal bridge-free construction. Equipment and windows must also be tested specifically to Passive House specifications, which can limit the available choices of certain products like HRVs.

Passive House does not require site-generated renewable energy, although it does provide a credit toward primary energy demand for on-site solar PV.

Passive House performance is modeled using PHPP, which is a giant spreadsheet that does a lot of backend calculating based on heat loss, heat gains, and local monthly average climate data.

For smaller buildings like ours, we will have difficulty meeting the standard without good unobstructed southern orientation (although there are a couple of new certification options that offer some hope – post to come). The south side yard is especially challenging because butting up against our desire to maximize south-facing windows are perfectly reasonable zoning requirements intended to protect the privacy of our neighbhours. Depending on the distance of the house to the property line, we are limited in the amount of glazing and the rooms in which we can have glazing facing the side yard.

What we do have going for us is a simple shape: both houses will basically be rectangles, which makes the detailing for no thermal bridging and a continuous air barrier much simpler (the less corners the better).

Regardless of whether we meet or seek official Passive House certification, I think the passive approach is common sense for any building anywhere, and this will form the foundation of our design approach.

Net Zero

Net zero energy means that, on an annual average basis, our project produces as much energy as we consume. Net zero carbon emissions means that we either purchase carbon offsets, or we avoid the use of fossil fuel based energy.

Can we produce on-site as much energy as we consume in a year? This will depend on three key things: the design of our enclosure to minimize energy loads, our behaviour as energy consumers, and the amount of solar PV capacity we can fit on the roof. In our case, BC Hydro allows net metering, so we can feed excess generated energy back into the grid, and draw it from the grid when we are in deficit.

Passive House does not require the use of on-site renewable energy, but it makes net zero energy consumption viable because it significantly reduces demand.

We’ll have to do some modeling to look at the solar potential of our roof in our specific location, as well as take a stab at estimating our energy demand to get a better sense of where we’re at.

I think this is a goal worth shooting for. We will design for an all-electric project with solar PV, since BC produces much of its electricity using “carbon-neutral” hydro electricity.

The Pretty Good House

The Pretty Good House is not so much a standard as a practical discussion happening on Green Building Advisor. It’s about making realistic choices based on the best bang for your buck in your climate, and still, by the way, ending up with something way better than code minimum. So not going quite as far as Passive House, but, say, 80% of the way there.

We’ve also seen a big variation in the actual energy consumption of certified Passive Houses, which reminds us of the critical importance of occupant behaviour. How does the impact of behaviour compare with the impact of a well designed home?

I like the Pretty Good House approach – and I would argue that it can lead us to a Really Good House – but it does require a sound understanding of the fundamentals. This is why programs like Passive House are great, because they work as learning tools.

So in summary, we will be applying passive house principles, striving for net zero energy consumption, and hopefully ending up with a couple of Really Good Houses. I am fortunate to work with a bunch of building science geniuses at RDH, who will help us get the details right.

Our project gives us a unique opportunity to compare an existing house retrofit to a new build on the same site, which is very exciting. There is also a new, slightly relaxed Passive House standard that was just released, designed for small houses on constrained lots like ours, so that might prove a viable option for us.

We will document our before and after energy consumption and share the results here. Stay tuned!

Concept Development

August 12, 2015 by clove Leave a Comment

I met with our friend and architect, Mark Ashby today. We strategized about what appear to be our biggest issues with the detached house strategy: side setbacks and windows.

If we were building two new houses, we could easily meet the R1-G Gonzales Small Lot zoning. But because we want to retain the existing house, we are challenged to fit everything in. The existing house is 25 feet wide. The R1-G zoning requires 8’ (2.4m) setbacks to side property lines if you want to have any windows in “habitable” rooms; 5’ (1.8m) if you don’t want windows.

Our lot is 63.8 feet (19.44m) wide and 119.8 feet (36.5m) long. If we met the 8’ setbacks on each side of the existing house, we are left with only 23 feet for the new property. If we also added 8’ on each side of the new house, we’re left with a 7’ wide house! Not exactly viable. So we’re looking at walls that don’t need windows, and looking at variances that can still allow us to meet the intent of the setback/window requirements (ie maintaining privacy between properties).

What we are currently thinking is this:

Maintain the 8’ setback to the south property line so we can design south facing windows in the new house to get as much passive solar gain as possible.
Reduce the setbacks between the houses to 5’ on each side, creating a 10’ wide shared driveway to the back. Do not install any windows on the north side of the new house, but maintain some of the windows on the south side of the existing house to allow some natural light. There will be no privacy issues with this variance, since the new house has no windows facing the existing house.
Reduce the setback at the north property line to 5’, but maintain a few strategically placed windows to allow natural light/egress without compromising privacy for the townhouse property to the north.
This scheme reduces the width of the new house to about 16 feet outside dimensions, which is narrow but doable.

Here’s what this looks like on the site plan:

Post-Move-In Update

July 26, 2015 by clove Leave a Comment

So we’re in! We spent the two weekends between closing and moving day cleaning every possible surface we could clean (walls, cupboards, appliances, floors, built-ins), yanking out the dank carpet in the basement, and then painting the smoking room/my new office, as it was by far the most offensive room (Zinsser BIN primer + top coats). Here’s what the built in shelving and the venetian blinds looked like as I cleaned them:

The quote to paint the entire house by a professional was entirely reasonable given the amount of work, but we couldn’t justify the cost when we knew it would all be redone again in a year or two. A friend offered to help with painting, so we hired her to finish painting the smoking room.

Matt also fixed the following:

Cracked pipe in the water main. I had called a plumber once we concluded that it was likely our main. They were scheduled to come on a Friday afternoon, but got tied up on other jobs and couldn’t make it out. Matt took a look on Sunday, easily dug up the soggy dirt, located the crack, googled a few pipe fixing videos, and voila: $30 and one slip joint later, good as new. Hooray for overbooked plumbers and handy husbands.
Plugged toilet. My dad and Matt took turns running the snake through both ends (external plumbing piping made this part easy!) with no luck. Matt removed the toilet and finally forced out a large chunk of glass that appeared to be the bottom of an oval shaped bottle that had wedged itself in the middle of the p-trap.
Broken light switch in the kitchen. Replacing the switch did the trick, simple enough.

The house has a much less offensive but still present old smoker house smell in some areas. The basement still smells like wet dog. We still have some cleaning we didn’t get to before moving; a dripping bath faucet, and a rotted out window to resolve.

I was so exhausted after moving that I had no motivation to clean or unpack. I just felt angry about the mess. Moving sucks. I’m now at the tail end of two weeks vacation and am making progress on both the boxes and my recovery. Hallelujah.

Why didn’t we get a home inspection again?

July 10, 2015 by clove Leave a Comment

Matt asked this question as we dug up the soggy grass in the front lawn to uncover a leak in the water main leading to our house.

Well, we got the house over another bidder who offered more than us because we went for a “conditions” approach. It was unlikely we were going to offer more money than any other bidders, so we made our offer only subject to financing and not subject to inspection. The sellers liked our conditions better and gave us the opportunity to match the other bidder’s price. We are beginning to see why they liked our conditions so much! We were ok with removing that condition because, 1) we could still get out of the offer if we really wanted to, using the financing condition, and 2) we’d be gutting the place anyway in a year or so.

But…in retrospect, we would have benefitted from getting the inspection anyway so we’d have a better idea what short term costs we’d be facing.

Closing Day!

July 2, 2015 by clove 2 Comments

I just got back from checking out our new house. We got the keys today and I rode over in the evening to assess the general condition and offensiveness of the cigarette smell. We are moving in two weeks, and this will be our home until we design and get approval for our project. We had previously thought that we would rent out the house in the short term, but that presented a number of complications that we weren’t comfortable with (see this post for more), and ultimately, we wanted to spend some time living in and getting to know our new house, our neighbours and our neighbourhood.

With this in mind, we needed to assess the bare minimum amount of work we needed to do in order to be reasonably comfortable for the next year or so, and to prioritize what two working parents who had barely started packing could accomplish in two short weeks.

Apart from a large pile of questionably recyclable junk left on the curb; overflowing garbage bins with additional bags piled on top- opened and picked through by birds and raccoons, and a bunch of paint and solvent cans left in the basement, the place was reasonably cleared out.

Take the tour:

The smoke smell upstairs was oppressive and made me feel instantly coated in a layer of filth. I set about opening windows, only to discover that many of them were either inoperable or painted shut. All original single pane wood windows, the windows that did open had no locking mechanism to leave them open securely.

I opened all of the doors to increase airflow. Most of them were in poor condition. I had to wiggle the locks and yank the handles around to release the locks and push them open. The old drive-under garage doors have a gaping hole between them. I can almost feel that winter breeze blowing through.

There’s a finished room in the basement, whose carpet is clean but has an old vacuum/wet dog smell to it, and there’s some stained carpet covering some of the unfinished basement areas that’s a stink generator and must be removed.

There’s a window in the upstairs bathroom that is rotting out, and the single sheet of glass has separated from the edge on two sides.

Why didn’t we get an inspection done again?

Learning from the Experts

June 26, 2015 by clove Leave a Comment

I met with Rus Collins of Zebra Design today. He a pioneer of small lot development in Victoria and spent a generous chunk of his Friday afternoon with me sharing his words of wisdom. He confirmed that I am on the right path by pursuing the subdivision option, as well as my plan to talk to the neighbhours early. He said that if I experience intense resistance in my early conversations, it might be best to cut our losses or wait a year before floating the idea again.

Here’s the process according to Rus (with some editorial added):

Do a very simple sketch or two of what we are proposing. Spend as little time and money as possible at this stage, because you won’t get this money back if the project dies.
Talk to our neighbhours with these early sketches to get a general sense for their openness to the project. While not required at this stage, it’s good to keep in mind that for the rezoning application in the City of Victoria, we will need signatures from 75% of our immediate neighbhours (anyone with a property line that is adjacent to ours at any point – across, beside and behind) confirming that they do not object to our plan. All adults of voting age count – so a couple living next door count as two votes. Renters and owners of a rental property all count as unique votes.
Talk to the local area city planner. Present the sketches and our proposed variances from the zoning we intend to apply for, as well as the early neighbour reactions. If she doesn’t raise any red flags, proceed with design.
Before launching into the full design, I recommend reviewing the Rezoning and/or Development Permit Application in detail, so you know what drawings need to be included in the package and what consultants you need on board. For Victoria, we need the following at a minimum:
1. Site plan (i.e. civil engineer)
2. Landscape plan (i.e. landscape architect or designer. Note a licensed architect is not required for a small project like our, but we’re using one, and it can help with the permitting process for anything ‘unusual’ like super-insulated walls)
3. Floor plans (i.e. architect or designer; also a structural engineer for modifications to the existing house)
4. Elevations
5. Photos or illustrations showing proposal with flanking buildings
Complete the full design.
Review again with the city planner (recommended by Rus to avoid being blindsided after getting neighbourhood approval and having to redesign and go back to the community again).
Present to the neighbhourhood association, in our case the Fairfield Community Association’s Advisory Design Committee. This process is also outlined in the rezoning application package document.
Collect the 75% signatures.
Complete and submit the rezoning and/or development permit application package, complete with application fee.

Rus felt the potential sticking point for our proposal was adding the suite to the existing house, given that it will become a small lot house. Current zoning does not allow for suites in small lot houses, and it’s often the addition of a suite that inflames the resistance of neighbhours. Most builders/owners will quietly add a suite later, and a quick survey of our block suggests that nearly every house on our block has some form of suite. It’s a reality of the local market that we both need rental accommodation and that many families need the additional income to afford their mortgages.

I would prefer to be above board in our application and advocate for the suite. If done well, it is a viable way to introduce a small increase in density to single family residential areas in the urban core. Our pitch is that we are creating housing for 2.5 families that uses less energy than the existing single family home on the property. I know that our current mayor Lisa Helps is open to making innovative projects happen and has been openly supportive of the North Park Passive House.

The existing but renovated house will create a transitional density between the adjacent townhouse to the north (FSR > 1.0) and the single family homes to the south (FSR = 0.5). The R1-G2 Small Lot Gonzales zoning allows for FSR = 0.55, which we can do for the new house. The existing house with suite will be less than 0.5. For the existing house, the basement area does not count toward the FSR calculation provided the bottom of the finished ceiling remains equal or less than 1.2 m above the average grade.

Rus thought we might be successful if we have a strong pitch (see Talking Points post). Overall, I left my meeting with Rus feeling optimistic about our chances. It’s also great to know that Rus is a potential resource-for-hire if we encounter difficulties getting through the rezoning process.

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