Today (which also happens to be our 1 year anniversary) we submitted our building plans to the city!

When you arrive at the Building Permits Office, you will need to put your name into a book on the counter, with the time you arrive, and why you are there. We had to wait over an hour to be seen because half the staff were on lunch at the time we went.

TIP: Builders send their interns to the Building Permit Office first thing in the morning, so it is very busy between 8am and 10am. Office staff go out for lunch in shifts between 11am and 1pm (we showed up at 11am). You could probably get seen fairly quickly if you came at 10am. Otherwise, some time after 1:30pm (when the backlog of people has started to clear) is probably best.

We weren’t actually applying for the permits today, but instead were just getting a preliminary review of our plans to have the city point out any (hopefully) minor deficiencies before our formal permit application.

There are two types of preliminary reviews one can opt for:

1. Preliminary Project Review (PPR) at a cost of $250, which is non-refundable.
2. Preliminary Application of Law (PAL) at a cost of 25% of projected permit fees paid in advance.

This latter review is far more detailed that the PPR but if you are fairly certain you are going ahead with the project it will save you $250 since you are really just paying a portion of your Permit fees now, instead of when you apply for the permit. (At present, permit fees are $13.10 per sq.m.)

We opted for the PAL review. With our application we also included photographs of our property with surrounding houses, and the houses across the street. This gives the Permit Office an idea about what the house will look like in relation to the rest of the neighbourhood. The package also had one set of scale drawings of the new house, and a stamped survey of the property.

Now that our plans have been submitted to the city builders will apparently now take our project much more seriously. We’re hoping to start interviewing builders as soon as we get the results of the preliminary review.

We should hear back from the office within 10 business days.