Month: November 2022

The Lay of the Land

/ Emily / Leave a comment
Image of excavated land
Who knew excavation could be so exciting (not always in the best way)

Permits in hand, we were ready to begin work. We got our culvert and temporary access (i.e., our driveway) installed, then had the surveyors place pins for excavation, and sought official quotes for excavation. This was the source of our first major snafu. 

We were expecting that excavation would be no sweat, our land was relatively flat after all and we didn’t need to dig a basement. However, while chatting with the person installing the temporary access, he mentioned that from our grading plan, it looked like we were importing an awful lot of fill. This was an understatement. When the quotes came back, it was about $100,000 worth of fill, not to mention the labour to install it and the gas to ship it. We were floored. This could be a knockout blow before we even started. It also wasn’t what we wanted, our house would have towered over the landscape, perched on a hill we built.

Thinking it over, a few things brought us to this point:

  1. We decided to build a raft slab foundation. Our project manager had recommended it to save cost and our architect agreed. This is a foundation that essentially floats on the ground. You insulate on all sides of the slab, obviating the need for footings below the frost line. It isn’t the norm for this area but is becoming more common. And it seemed to make sense for our house and our land, where there’s bedrock close to the surface. It would save us having to blast.
  2. Because it’s an unusual construction type, the foundation seemed to stump a few people, including our grading designers, who designed the grading similar to how it would typically be done (like in a house with a basement). We would have appreciated a discussion of the different options and implications.
  3. Our lack of experience and construction knowledge meant that we didn’t glean any of this from the grading plan – and it wasn’t obvious to anyone else involved (or wasn’t flagged if it was).
  4. Because the subtrades weren’t willing to provide quotes ahead of time, our project manager’s estimate was based on previous jobs rather than our specific circumstances and ended up missing the mark.
Image of gravel pad for slab on grade house
We got our pad!

We had to get the septic and grading plan amended and resubmit for approval. The whole process set us back over a month. Our excavation cost was, in the end still higher than originally estimated, but we hope to make it up in other ways along the way. We’re just happy we didn’t have to build our own mountain.

Finally, in August 2022, we had our pad and were ready to start the structure!

We did hit another hit another minor snaggle with excavation when the surveyors came in to pin the foundation. They thought the excavator put the pad in the wrong place. We checked and it was exactly where we wanted it, so if that was a mistake, it was a happy one for us, though it did lead to a little finger point between the subtrades. You win some, you lose some.

Submitting for Permits

/ Emily / Leave a comment

At the beginning of 2022, all our ducks were nearly in a row when we caused our own delays by rethinking our house design. It wasn’t a major change in the grand scheme of things, but we ultimately decided to go with our gut on two things weren’t quite sitting well with us. One was to bring our kitchen closer to our south-facing windows for more natural light and views and the other was to nix the idea of an unconditioned entryway – our architect had used in other projects but that we weren’t totally sold on it. 

My take is that you shouldn’t have to work too hard to convince yourself that you can live with something, so if it bothers you, change it while you have the chance. Also, it’s best to feel sure by the time you submit for permits because things start to feel very real from that point. Designs done and dusted, we were ready to submit for permits at the end of May 2022.

There are a few approvals we needed to get before breaking ground on our house, including:

  1. Septic permit
  2. Private approach permit
  3. Building permit

Each of these needed supporting documents and had fees attached.

Septic Permit

Because we are building in rural area, we won’t have any connections to city services for sewage or water. This means we need to install a septic system and a well. In Ottawa, septic systems require a permit, which is issued by the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority (RVCA). To apply for a permit, you need a site plan showing your proposed system and a grading plan. We hired an engineer (our architect arranged this) to draw these up. We found placement of the house on the site seemed fairly arbitrary, so there was a lot of back and forth with the grading designer to make sure it was oriented properly and located where we wanted it.

We paid around $900 in application fees and had our permit issued by RVCA within about two weeks of applying.

Private Approach Permit

If you are installing a driveway in Ottawa, you need a private approach permit to connect to the City’s property. Inspections and approvals go through the Right of Way Permit Office. You need to provide your site plan showing your proposed driveway, an application fee ($182), and a $3,000 Right of Way damage deposit. You can apply for a refund of the damage deposit after the work is done, provided no repairs to City property were needed.

One inefficiency we found is that your building permit application must be submitted in person at a City of Ottawa Client Service Centre. This is also where you pay your ROW damage deposit. The private approach permit application and application fee, however, must be submitted separately to the Right of Way Permit Office, which can only be contacted via email. You email your application then wait for them to call you to collect payment. 

The inspector texted me a picture of my approval within a few days of submitting my application, but it took another four weeks before I received a call back from someone to collect payment and issue the official permit. Perhaps some additional review takes place behind the curtain.

Building Permit

Building permits are issued by the City of Ottawa Building Department. This is a big package to pull together requiring a fair bit of coordination and includes:

  1. Your completed application form (architect completes most of this)
  2. Two hard copies of construction drawings reviewed and stamped by a structural engineer (architect created drawings and had them reviewed)
  3. Your septic permit, septic design and grading plan (completed by septic and grading designer, approved by RVCA)
  4. Your HVAC design (HVAC designer creates this)
  5. Your truss design (truss company designs this)
  6. If applicable: woodstove details, including manufacturer instructions for installation of stove and chimney
  7. A cheque for your building permit fee
  8. A cheque for your development fees

The building permit fee is calculated based on the total square footage of your house while the development fees are based on where you are located within the city. Our total development fees were about $20,000, which is at the low end for Ottawa.

Image of raw land with surveyor stakes marking perimeter of house to be built
Ready to build at last!

Once the package was submitted, the waiting game began. At the counter, the clerk said it takes about 10 days for a permit to be issued. Ours took about six weeks, which our architect and project manager assured us was quick compared to other projects they’d seen, particularly during pandemic times. 

Once submitted, your application does the rounds around the building department and if there are questions, the reviewer sends you a formal letter (via email thankfully) requesting a response. We only received two questions. The one we could answer instantly and the other – a request for additional detail about posts on our porch – required us to get updated drawings from the structural engineer. In June 2022, we had the official green light to proceed! This was 13 months after closing on our land and starting our build planning.

Owner, Builder, Project Manager

/ Emily / Leave a comment

It’s easy enough to indulge in the fun parts of designing a house, but inevitably, practical concerns bring you down to earth. After all, the perfect floorplan doesn’t mean much if you can’t afford to build it. While an architect is an expert at giving form to your ideas, the best person to tell you how much a house will cost is someone with experience buying building materials and hiring trades. You need a contractor.  

If you’re building a net-zero passive-style home, you’ve narrowed the field quite a bit to a short list of people with experience building this type of house. We started our search by Googling contractors in our area that advertised net-zero builds and found three or four to interview. This process took some time. Contractors are chatty people, as a rule, and it can take persistence to get from initial talks and hypotheticals to firm answers. Still, we found it helpful to show them what we were working on to figure out whether it was even within the realm of possibility to build within our budget.

We spent several months in a Goldie Locks period of feeling people out. One had good pricing but was moody and combative, another talked a good game but lacked follow through, and one insisted it was impossible to build a house for less than seven figures while trying to scare us away from the competition by professing ominous, but vague concerns for our wellbeing. We eventually settled on one our architect had worked with recently, Kaner Contracting. They were good-natured, organized, and could work with our budget.

Image of steamroller on excavated land with gravel driveway
Ground officially broken!

A word on terminology, in Ontario, the New Home Warranty Program exists to ensure builders provide warranties on homes they build. In the usual scenario, a builder has control over the project and the subcontractors who build your home and then warranties the work after you take possession. If you’re building your own home, however, you may opt to be an owner-builder, meaning that you retain control over the project and are responsible for hiring subcontractors directly. You may hire a project manager with experience in building to coordinate the project. In this case, you don’t have a builder to warranty the build, though you still have the warranties of each sub-contractor. This is the route we opted to take for greatest control over our project. We also wanted to reserve the option to do some things ourselves where it’s within our abilities. All this to say, though I use contractor or sometimes builder as shorthand, we are our own builder and hired a knowledgeable project manager for our build.

With our project manager hired, it took several more months to get anywhere close to firm costing of our project. It seems that subcontractors don’t like to quote services too far out and, factoring in rapidly changing material prices throughout 2021-2022, a project estimate was a slippery fish to catch. We found ourselves a bit bemused trying to figure out how to keep within budget. All our ideas for keeping building costs down – things like simplified footprint, lower ceilings, less square footage – we’re shrugged away by contractors as saving us a bit but ‘not that much.’ Ultimately, it seems, building a house is a leap of faith. We got as close to a comprehensively quoted project as we could, took a hard look at our finances, our mortgage approval, and worst-case scenarios, and jumped. 

Our project officially kicked off in June 2022 with surveying and installation of our temporary access. We quite like our wide driveway!