We received a notice from the city telling us about our meeting with the Committee of Adjustments on the 23rd. It included a slightly different description for one of our variances however, but hopefully that won’t affect our letters of support.

They describe the section of our house that exceeds the 17m boundary as being in violation not because of the length of the house (as we thought) but because the section that exceeds the 17m boundary must be 7.5m away from the sideyards. This means we would have to be on a lot at least 15m wide to have a section this far back (at which point the structure could be the width of a hair).

But presumably this amounts to the same thing: on a property of our width we are slightly over the length limit, regardless if whether it’s because the house is a little long, or just that the rear portion of the house is too close to the sideyards.

[Update: It seems all our neighbours received the same mailing. I guess the city must send out notice to all other homes in the vicinity when one is going to apply for a variance with the committee of adjustments.]

We’ll be waiting a little bit longer to get the most important question about this project answered: what will it cost? More than anything else, this will inform us about our ability to actually proceed with the build.

Unfortunately, at this time of the year everyone involved in the building trade is insanely busy, so it’s been difficult for the general contractors to get numbers from their trades & suppliers.

As such, the date for return of the bids has been moved to May 20th.  You might think it would have been worthwhile to start the bidding process earlier, but there is then an added problem for
the general-contractor: what if prices change between the time the bid is submitted, and the time the work is ready to be done.

Quotes are often only good for 30 days but because of our timeline with the committee of adjustments (when the documents were initially drawn up) we had to ask that they be good for 60 days. With luck, perhaps we’ll have actually broken grown by June 19 after all.

The city of Coeur D’Alene in Idaho has a great reference guide to trees suitable for urban settings. I’m not sure if all these trees would be approved by Toronto’s Urban Forestry Service (though it would be nice if they offered a similar guide for Toronto).

One of the ‘front runner’ candidates we are looking at planting (as suggested by my Mom) is a Crimean Linden tree. They apparently grow very quickly (great for carbon sequestration), grow to a size of 60′ high and 30′ wide, and (are rumoured to) naturally repel mosquitoes. Sounds like a great backyard tree, to me!

As I think I have previously mentioned, we’ll be applying for a few ‘minor variances’ to Toronto’s building by-laws. These are:

1. A by-law requiring new construction to provide a parking space “behind the front wall of the house.” Because we’re building a very high-efficiency, clean/green house, we’d rather not have a garage inside the structure. Our plan is to just continue using the current driveway area in front of the house as we do now, but a variance is still required if we do not want to add a garage, side-carport, etc.
2. City by-laws suggest that the “gross floor area” of the floors of a new home be no more than 60% of the lot size but allow for ‘minor variances’ up to 100% of the lot. Our house will be 27.2 sq.m (293 sq.ft) over the 60% limit. 204 sq. ft. of this is caused by a 1-storey extension we wanted to add to the back of the house at the last minute (a kind of indoor / outdoor room that is insulated but not heated).
3. City by-laws suggest a house should extend no more than 17m (56′) behind “the average of the fronts of the two neighbouring properties.” Because of the 1-storey indoor-outdoor room (which is 3.7m deep), our new house would wind up being too deep by 1.93m (a little over 6′). Of these 6 feet, 4 feet are the result of not starting the house as far forward as the city would like. The house will only be 58′ long, but it starts 4′ behind “the average of the fronts of the two neighbouring properties” (in line with the house to the south of us). This helps us receive more passive-solar heating from the sun in the back portion of the house. We’re still not sure if this addition will be built at this time, but it seems worthwhile to get the variance for it now.

Last week I submitted some additional documentation for our file at the Committee of Adjustments. This included:

• survey of the land, including trees
• photos of the neighbourhood showing our house in relation to its neighbours, up, down and across the street.
• letters of support from our neighbours next door, across the street and behind us. (Actually the letter from our backyard-neighbours just arrived yesterday so I’ll be dropping that off today.)

So we now have ‘letters of support‘ (pdf) from our neighbours on all four sides of our property, which is great! They have all, thus far, been really helpful and enthusiastic about our plans to build. (Hopefully that enthusiasm holds through a few months of hammering. )

We received the detailed plans from Joanne (the architect) on Thursday along with a 40 (or so) page document. The document includes the tender to the contractors that describes the obligations of all parties to each other, and details about what materials will be used. I’m only about half-way through the document at the moment and have been jotting down many questions for the architects.

There are two contractors making formal bids for this project and each picked up two copies of the plans and 2 copies of the tender documents. According to the documents they must return their bid by May 10.

When we initially hired an Arborist to come look at our neighbour’s trees, it was with the intent of developing a protection plan for them. Unfortunately, his inspection found that primary tree that we needed to protect is probably not worth saving. It has developed a split down the middle that will eventually lead to the tree falling down in a future wind storm. As such he thought we should investigate removing the tree now, and felt the city inspector would certainly agree with his assessment if we decided to go that way.

We discussed the matter with our neighbours and offered to either protect the tree (which involves changes to the architectural plans and a specialized building structure) or remove the tree. Since there would be costs involved to preserve the tree, we also offered to cover the costs remove it; whichever they wished. They had a near-miss with a tree that fell just a few feet away from their house a few years earlier, and so agreed that the safer course of action would be to remove the tree now. (The split in the tree aims one of the two major branches towards the house.)
Even in a case where the city will clearly agree with the Arborist’s assessment, there is still quite a bit of paperwork to be done. We must apply to the city for its removal, and since it is not our tree, our neighbour had to sign a city form authorizing our Arborist to act on their behalf.

The costs to us for removing the tree include a fee of $100 per tree (just one in this case) to make the application to the city, and $550-750 (est.) to have a company come in and professionally/safely remove the tree.

For our initial meetings with contractors Joanne & Alex had put together a list of materials we will likely use in the home’s construction. Here they are:

Below Grade Enclosure

• Foundation Wall Assembly
• Clean, Free-draining backfill
• 2″ Roxul DrainBoard Foundation Insulation
• Damp-proofing on cement parging
• 10″ Durisol ICF
• 3/4″ strapping
• 1/2″ DensArmor Plus

• Basement Floor Slab Assembly
• 4″ Compacted Gravel Base
• 2″ EPS Insulation
• 6mil Polyethylene Sheet
• 4″ Concrete Floor Slab

Above Grade Enclosure

• Wall Assembley (R40)
• Fibre Cement Board Cladding
• 3/8″ Strapping
• 4″ Polyisocyanurate Insulation
• 1/2″ ZIP OSB Sheathing
• 2×6 SPF Framing at 600mm o.c.
• Cellulose Cavity Insulation
• 1/2″ Gypsum Board

• Roof Assembly (R60)
• Enviroshake Shingles
• 5/8″ ZIP OSB Sheathing
• Attic Trusses at 600mm o.c.
• R60 Loose-fill Cellulose Insulation
• 1/2″ Gypsum Board

• Windows and Doors
• Fiberglass framed, double-glazed, low-e (SHGC < 0.5, VT > 0.5, overall U-value < 2.0 w/m/K), argon filled, superspacer windows
• Insulated metal-clad wood entry doors

Mechanical / Electrical

• Space Heating and Domestic Water Heating
• Source: High-efficiency condensing boiler (high temperature DHW and low temperature space heat) with integral or external heat exchanger.
• Distribution: Hydronic Radiant Floor Slabs (all floors)
• Rough-in for future solar pre-heat and power.

• Ventilation
• Direct outdoor air system (DOAS) – dedicated ducted supply with Heat Reclaim Ventilation (HRV). Supply points in all bedrooms and living rooms, exhaust from kitchen and bathrooms.

I think the ZIP OSB sheathing is one of the more interesting products to be used in this project. It differs from regular sheathing in that, once installed, creates a perfect water barrier for your home, before siding is even attached. As a result once the sheathing is on, work can actually proceed on the interiors while work continues to complete the exterior shell.

Neat!

Oh phooey. I thought we were going to be getting quotes from the contractors today, but alas today is not THE day.

This is my own fault though: I completely failed to read the part of the schedule provided by our architect where this was detailed (I mostly paid attention to the things we had to do). The detailed plans are, in fact, just being prepared by the architect now and will go out to the contractors this week.

We’ll also be trying to talk to the builder references this next week and visit their work sites.

Massay University in New Zealand today announced a significant advancement in solar technology.

Dr. Wayne Campbell proposes a technique that uses nanotechnology to make photo-electric solar cells from dyes such as a synthetic chlorophyl. The cells would cost just 1/10th that of traditional silicon-based sells and use readily renewable and simple to process resources.

This adds more credence to my personal opinion that we will see a massive shift towards solar power generation in 5-10 years.

Unconnected to this announcement but on the same topic, Xerox PARC has posted an interesting lecture on the history and future direction of photovotaics.

Time has a posted parallel articles on creating earth-friendly homes and changes you can make in your lifestyle to reduce CO₂ emmissions and consume less power.