With damproofing done, electrical conduit run where it needs to be and weeping tile in place the last task before backfill is the gravel. The gravel cover goes on the weeping tile to bed it in place and ensure any groundwater can flow into the weeping tile. Site access was poor however the slinger truck was able to make it work.
Lots of conduit for electrical lines later that run below the slab.
Use of large precast window wells necessitates a large hole in the ground to fit the oversized concrete walls.
Each time I prepare the site for these it seems not enough room is left. With the deliveries booked for this week, little option remains except to grab the shovel. Frozen ground conditions don’t help.
Giant hole in the ground so the precast window well can fit. It will then need a lot of backfill but I’ll be making sure a machine does that.
While we are a long way from enjoying stucco weather, we need to prepare the building to resist the elements and protect the interior as we approach insulating and drywalling, not exactly the materials you want to have exposed to moisture.
Once again I have turned to my friendly lebanese crew to do the stucco, but for preparing the paper and wire component I have a separate crew of equally skilled guys. They will do the all important flashing, membrane, peel and stick window application, paper and wire, and soffit fascia, siding, and all that goes along with it.
Here we have the black paper applied beneath the tyvek that is under the window flange. This is step 1 of the process.
In step 2, the peel and stick is applied to the window flange on the vertical sides of the window.
A reverse drip flashing is applied below the window to prevent water being able to get behind the stucco
A bottom flashing is applied below the level of the framing so no water can reverse into the wood structure.
A drip flashing with end dams is extended well over the width of the frame, along with the peel and stick and building paper. Note the small amount of paper (tyvek), that is left hanging over the drip flashing. This allows much easier clean up after the stucco is applied. It just cuts off leaving a nice clean flashing, much less work for the stucco guys.
After all this paper work the wire of the metal lath is applied, carefully only nailed to the studs. This is what bears the weight of the sand and cement mixture. This is a good crew of skilled tradespeople with a lot of experience in ensuring the building does not leak. Claude is the guy who runs the operation, and he has observed every possible candidate area to leak. I am confident this will be done well, and the stucco will have the best possible life span.
A killarney builder/mad scientist type is launching a sea can garage house in the yard of typical 50 ft r2 lot on 32nd ST. This is an interesting and bold choice to tackle this, and I appreciate it. I have been less than enthusiastic about these garage suites because the cost of building such a small structure is so punitive. I am pretty sure I have built an entire 1900 sq ft semi detached home with a full basement and a garage for not much more construction expenditure than some garage houses that have been built in the area.
The value proposition of these things is lacking (depending on what it eventually costs). Of course I have to buy the land too, usually these are built by owners who may have bought a house years ago for a very low price and just want to add or improve it, so their land cost is nil. Unfortunately if you do build a garage suite you may be left with a really rough old bungalow in the front yard, and you have to cobble together a workable sewer gas and water system. I assume because I know how to do this stuff and what it will take to get it done properly I am more hesitant to try it than someone that has little inner city redevelopment experience, but is enamoured with the notion of having a unique carriage house in the back yard. It is good to see people launch passion projects like this and overcome the business case argument that seems to control my every move these days.
three of the cans are welded together and windows and doors cut out
it appears that the cans will be hoisted onto this garage slab that is built using an insulated concrete form frost wall. I'd like to build something like this but I am way too tied up with the rowhouse project, a mad science experiment in its own way...
The rowhouse was poured yesterday and the forms are coming off now. I always appreciate the appearance of the raw concrete beneath the forms as a sort of unveiling of the new work in progress that can really start with that solid base.
We've also been blessed by warm western winds for the last week and the mud has dried, making the form strippers job a whole lot less hazardous.
Here we have the basement being stripped and the foundation is unveiled. Note the walkout and lower unit access points. This has created a massive amount of extra concrete use, up to 70 m3 of concrete for the walls on this pour. That is 50% more than my earlier semi detached basement pour. The footing also consumed almost double the earlier, and simpler build.
from the faq section of the new Alberta builder licence program:
What if I want to build my own home? Do I need to get a licence?
Individuals building their own home do not need to get a licence. Individuals can build their own home once they have been issued an Owner Builder Authorization by the Registrar.
This is another example of the absurdity of the bureaucracy under which we all must function. If you want to build a house to live in for yourself, by yourself, you need the government to say it is ok, or you can’t get a building permit from any municipal authority without waiver of your builder licence. You'd also need to get a waiver to avoid having to pay the warranty fee to put a warranty on your own self built home, which it can also decline to provide. How long will it be before this government uses this power abusively and either requires cash payments to speed the process or decides the house you want to build is the the wrong place or won’t achieve the requirements of its agenda? Housing seems to be a constant target for government scope creep and bureaucratic fees. This same government will complain later when there is an affordability issue, and its response will be to further raise taxes on builders without examining its own role in adding fees and inefficiency to the industry.
My usual contractor is back to complete the mechanical work this week. With the tin work well underway we can turn to electrical as our next work.
the basement mechanical room is progressing nicely.
The plumber and tin crew are working together to minimize bulkhead work that reduces the spacious feel of our high ceilings
After some difficult work at the rowhouse it was nice to return to the semi. The drainage plumbing is progressing nicely and nearly complete. The fireplace crew was on site as well and put in the units. We’ve got some nice dual sided units that add a lot of luxury to the space.
The drainage plumbing is one of the least diy friendly tasks, so we are grateful for the plumber taking care of it
One of my favourite fireplace models is unfortunately frighteningly pricey.
With very warm conditions the rowhouse footing will be the beneficiary. Perfect day to pour and have the concrete cure in warm temperatures. Getting this foundation done and backfilled will be a huge relief for the builder.
You cannot understate the importance of getting this right...
and a few hours later the trucks arrive and $5000 worth of concrete fills the forms.
Council nearly unanimously voted for the rcg application on 26a st in Killarney. This is the first, to my knowledge, of a location in the centre of the community to receive the approval. The builder intends to do a four unit rowhouse and a modifier was embedded in the process to restrict height to 10m and remove the permitted use of secondary suites.
It was an interesting debate and the opposition from local residents that appeared a little on the nimby side was generally ignored. A member of the Killarney community association planning committee led the advocacy against the application and attempted to gather a petition and represent the entire community. I felt the choice of language, while perhaps innocent enough, was highly inappropriate and incorrect.
It looks like the new council has digested what rcg is and does, and wants to amend and improve the category. Administration is working on this soon and a report will be prepared for Council. I’m in favour of this and pleasantly surprised how much policy and ideas have changed on this matter over a short time. Congratulations to the new small business row house builder homes squared and welcome to 26a st (site of my current semi).
Council meets tomorrow and the meeting will slog painfully through twenty or more secondary suite applications. Once that is done, who knows what time it will be, council must then deal with substantive planning matters throughout the city. This could be well into the evening or possibly Tuesday morning.
The rcg application on 26a st will be decided at that time. It is very hard to predict the outcome of this vote, and not because four on council are new. I’d suspect the new councillors will view this application favourably. What isn’t clear is how much community opposition there will be and how effective it is. The applicant appears to have done a good job collecting support for the application and the community association avoided the nimby type reactionary oppposition. This certainly changes my original prediction from the spring where I estimated the chance of success to be low.
I’ll attempt to watch some of the webcast on my cell phone. Attending the meeting to watch in person when you can’t tell what time it will start is really disruptive to my work day. Once the vote is over I will attempt to post as much detail from the results as possible.
The public hearing notice is posted on the property and online. Unfortunately they can’t tell you what time to watch the webcast.
The rowhouse project foundation, as I predicted, isn’t easy to build. All attempts I made to ward off problems preemptively were not successful. The issues tend to deal with translation from computer screen to paper plan to a large hole in the dirt. The surveyor is meant to be the translator in the critical step from drawing to dirt. Unfortunately the footing contractor determined (too late) that the survey points were inadequate leading to much debate and consternation about how to proceed (over a weekend). Have I learned my lesson in how to make sure a foundation is surveyed properly? Should I not know by now what details must be on the plan such that the cribbers can do their job? You’d expect so considering the number of houses that I’ve built over the years. Hopefully this job site suffering can teach me some more lessons on what not to do that I can benefit from next time.
the footing form work is underway.
Some of the unfortunate details that needed deal with before work began.
At the outset of this project I decided to focus (even more) on having the structural work done faster. During the last project we encountered severe winter conditions and the framing contractor had some personnel matters that slowed work. As you will see from the numbers below, work pace was drastically impacted.
previous project - Footing to Shingle total build time 90 days.
current project - Footing to Shingle total build time 40 days.
All of this 50 day difference, which is a tremendous amount of time to save, is due to contractor selection. The current project contractor was so fast I was having a hard time keeping up with material delivery and had to bring in both lumber and the windows at an accelerated pace over what I had planned. Cumulative cost to build to date including land on the project is high, we are likely over $775k in expenditure. That is a lot of money to be tied up unproductively for 50 unnecessary days due to the pace of labour. If the time cost of the project works out to $200/day, which is a reasonable assumption given the utilities, taxes, fence and toilet rental, insurance, etc, the faster crew saved $10k in cost. 40 days is by far the fastest build I have been involved with to date.
The remarkable productivity of the framing crew puts them to the top of my current 'favourite' contractor list. Each project I re-evaluate the small businesses that best deliver for me and I sole source them work the next time. Those crews get contracts without having to do any marketing and I can make a more accurate schedule, and we all benefit.
You can't start the shingle until the framing is done. This makes the time from pouring the basement footing to starting the roofing a good metric to evaluate pace of work.
the roofers are dealing with some hideous weather by blowing off the roof and working on the warmer days. We’ve specified a duration shingle that claims to resist the wind storms that have blown off less brands. We also have some W shaped flashed valleys on top of the usual ice and water and membrane layers. Each stairwell features a skylight so those have been flashed with the factory kit. Let’s hope these efforts lead to a roof with a long life.
These shingles have the reinforced nailing strip so advertise better wind resistance.
The framers were back and started framing out the basements. This will allow the following trades to compete the basement as if it is part if the first mobilization rather than a second project.
To the builder, going from a dirt basement floor to a heated and cured slab with a framed product in a week is really fast. At this pace we will be through plumbing, mechanical and electrical in a month ready to inspect and start drywall.
The temporary stairs are still useful. Landings and basement treads are ready to be built.
I hired my favourite excavator to dig the row house basement. I knew the rowhouse would be extra tricky given the sunken patio and walkout cut. All of this means more excavation, more accuracy and more backfill. The sunken patio took an extra day to dig. I’ve already complained that my cribber is charging me the same price to crib the tall walls of the sunken patio as the remainder of the three basements.
Next we underestimated the volume of dirt to come out of the hole. The city has restricted dumping at landfills such that the only available dump zone was the south Calgary health campus. That would be a huge commute. We decided to dump the surplus dirt at my other Killarney house so we could retrieve it later. This saved the round trip commute of 10 gravel truck loads. That may have saved 20 hours of travel time that was better invested in digging than trucking.
The excavator was still digging as the surveyors arrived to mark out the footings. Enough was marked out such that the footing crew can begin right away. We’ve got the cribbers lined up to start as soon as they finish another Killarney row house only 10 blocks away. Sometimes I get lucky with scheduling and other times it is a total fiasco. Today was definitely on the lucky side to have a free dumping zone and to have the surveyors and footing supplies arrive at the proper time. Now we need a little luck with the weather ...
a lot of dirt and nowhere to put it. We need a lot of backfill so we left dirt in the front yard and back yard, and even at my other site.
The framers have the advantage of a man lift with a railed platform on it. That makes window install way easier. This is the first install I’ve done under the new code with the peel and stick membrane, fortunately my framers seem very familiar. All the windows should be done tomorrow and we’ve arrived at lockup. This is a good thing as we can control access a little better. Some idiot arrived at the site late one night and tried to drill the lock on the framers lock box. I didn’t realize the kind of person who would do that owned a drill. Likely they stole the drill from some other job site to continue their life of crime. There is no shortage of these idiots around the inner city. The police have no way to deal with these people so we didn’t file a report.
The framers have a four wheel drive elevator. The productivity gains here are significant
this is the peel and stick membrane that is put on the window jamb before the window goes in.
Frequent readers of this page will no doubt be familiar with the regular diatribes against all levels of government incompetence and lies that the good people of Alberta must endure. The latest example is the broken promise of the liberal government. The liberals like to grandstand as protectors of the lower economic classes and other such nonsense. What they really do is just the opposite (i.e the finance minister business dealings).
There is perhaps no better technique to increase the supply of rental housing than to tax it less. Less tax would make more builders build, and rents would be that much lower to benefit the tenants as supply and competition grow. The liberals know this and used some nicely placed lies to help get themselves elected. Now they are breaking yet another major promise to remove the gst on rental housing.
Rental housing is a service provided by landlords to tenants. Yet it is not subject to GST. However, when built, the feds receive a huge windfall of cash on new rental housing. On a small building the feds will earn $50-$100k, that is a lot of money. The landlord will have to recoup that GST over the next few years of rent. It takes a lot of rent to raise $50k to give to the government. Rather than collect GST on new rental housing and then waste it on useless initiatives and pensions, perhaps the liberals will reconsider its broken promise and actually do something to help renters live more affordably (I doubt it) like they promised during the last campaign.
Here is the liberal figurehead, and primary broken promises maker.
We got out the heaters and hundred pound propane tanks. That is the cheap way of getting the basement heated so we could properly pour the slabs. Total cost about $200 plus cobbling together some tarps and plastic to cover the windows and stair well which was more work than I’d like it to be. Fortunately the coop gas bar near Killarney has a propane fill station so tank fills are possible.
the slab has cured nicely. By framing the basements soon we can stay ahead of the trades. I also resent hanging the furnace and trying to pour the slab later. With the radon sealing rules we don’t want to be doing that. This way we can be more confident that the radon pipe will be the only significant penetration in the slab. The next job for me is to seal the perimeter with caulking and all the pipe stacks. Lumber is ordered so we should be having those basements framed soon.
With windows and shingles on site ready for install we are nearly at lockup stage. Getting the building snow proof is a huge plus. Shoveling the inside of the project last year was a lot of work and a waste of effort.
Ready to go. Some nice and large windows need to be installed soon.