Testing for soil bearing

We experienced some softer than ideal soil conditions while excavating at the lakeview project. This led to a few delays and we decided to call in an engineer experienced with alternative foundation building techniques such as screw piling and compacting fill. After exposing final bottom of footing grade we were relieved to test the soil bearing and finding it adequate. We will do a broader study once it is all dug out but avoiding a screw pile foundation was a major relief.

Field testing the soil bearing capacity

House completion during the pandemic

At the conclusion of every home build I’m reminded how hard it is to get a house into delivery ready condition. Endless rounds of cleanups and touchups are needed and much energy is expended with very little progress to show. Throw in some inspections and paperwork details and it can get exhausting. Doing this during the heightened stress level of the viral outbreak is another layer of complexity. At the end the Killarney project has really come together. I posted a bunch of photos on Instagram. We will take a breather now and try and practice a little stronger physical distancing including hopefully construction distancing.

Final interior photo from the completed side.

thoughts on roof design

The builder is definitely not the person designing the roof structure. From the drafting shop, the file is sent to the truss fabricator for design of the individual truss profiles, and of course pricing. In my experience, it is really easy to identify a costly roof from a basic low cost roof based on the appearance and spans needed, lower slope and bigger spans being more expensive. The truss factory is among the most efficient producers of material we have in the industry though. So even a costly roof design is still viable to specify for a client. The trusses are prefab done off site in a mechanized factory in a lower cost rural area and trucked in to the site. This is fast and efficient. Asking farmers to make the trusses by hand would be a far inferior means of building a house.

Typical of the construction business, to do a better spec’d truss package will not cost 10-20% more than a basic package. You can spend double or more than double on the custom roof. Such is the case of the upcoming project garage I am working on now. A typical four car garage truss pack can be easily purchased for under $2000. Yet a custom two car garage roof somehow came out to be $3000. That is almost double the cost for half the space. In my world that is a 4x upcharge. Is it worth it? I think so because this will be a really interesting and useful garage with a completely vaulted ceiling inside. Essentially the garage could easily contain a lift system allowing someone to work on their own car or store an additional care. Having a costly truss package is a lot cheaper than building a third stall.

This garage also merits a more costly opener, such as side lift rather than typical ceiling mount, and likely a fancy door too with better insulation and windows. So there are further implications of going with the more costly product, that is the future selections made necessary to specify later will also be more. A smart builder will be able to estimate the increased cost of custom work and also the collateral cost in the future to make it all function properly. This is also why it is a slippery slope to attempt to mix lower cost builder grade material with higher cost custom material, they don’t necessarily cooperate with each other. If you go the higher cost route from the beginning of a project, then likely everything else will need to be upgraded too. By the time the house is built you can experience a massive divergence from what you’d intended to spend to what you must spend to include the products you want.

This illustrates what I mean by builder grade truss profile being very inexpensive, yet custom profile being very costly. Both serve the same purpose, but one garage will have a higher ceiling and a much bigger price tag. On a million dollar house these details are worth pursuing, on a basic house, not so much.

on the merit of variable rate mortgages

Lots of chatter on the web this weekend on the corona virus impact on the global economy, all horrible (except for gold). It did appear that we were in the ‘everything bubble’ having graduated from the nearly disastrous ‘housing bubble’ that brought the US economy and global financial system to the brink of disaster in 2008. How this will impact the Canadian housing market remains unclear, surely the emergency rate cut of 0.5% will stoke the market somewhat, but it could be into a major headwind of declining home values based on a slowing economy and job market, could one simply offset the other?

The fact remains you must live somewhere, rents are not cheap, and there are lots of benefits to owning property, along with a lot of costs (like rising taxes, and hideous condo fees). One of the biggest ownership costs is interest to the banks, the large businesses that effectively create electronic money in the from of loans that individuals then pay back (forever), in principle and interest. Minimizing bank interest is a great strategy, and to date, almost without exception, variable rate terms have been the way to go. Borrowers benefit tremendously in an economy where the 5 year bond yields have been dropping continuously for many years and are now approaching all time lows (and possibly on the way to zero). Buyers can lock in a reasonably priced house and then ride rates down, effectively the house payment gets less every year or every time there is a rate cut. Imagine that, a payment that goes down every year, while you get to own your own house and accrue more principle pay down every two weeks.

So how much does a 0.5% cut to the variable rate loan actually save the borrower? That depends on the size of the loan. Lets go with a fairly typical $450k loan that a Canadian household may have. The payment would drop from $1175 to 1124, which is just a cut of $51, not much. The bonus is the interest portion would drop from $523 to $436, so that is $87 less in interest cost every two weeks. Yet the principle paydown increases from $652 to $688. So this is a triple win, lower overall payment, much lower interest, and a little extra principle meaning the loan goes down faster while paying less to service it.

What does this mean for the Calgary market? I think there is going to be tremendous energy in the lower tier market for buyers that have a reasonably steady job to house hunt. Added to this are Calgary home prices that are way less than they were 5 years ago after the lengthy recession you are starting from quite low levels. For a couple earning average wages with some discipline to save and avoid renting, now could be the time to buy. These 2% rates are just absolutely enticing because you can borrow 95% of the price of a house and have a very manageable payment. Take for instance a $300k townhouse, purchased with minimal down payment of $15k or 5%. At a low rate variable loan the payment is only $1300. This is lower than rent even if you throw in some condo fees and property tax, plus the buyer keeps a high portion of the payment in equity growth. There will be a lot of investor buyers as well at the cheap rates who want to acquire more rental properties. The impact on higher cost housing is more pronounced in terms of interest savings, but it takes a lot more confidence to buy a $ million luxury home than it does a starter home priced below cost of production, which many are. The added bonus of buying a lower priced house is that in the event of some change in circumstance, low cost homes are really easy to rent and cover the cost, even with some left over positive cash flow.

Here is an amortization schedule. These terms are favourable for the buyer who is borrowing money at the cost of inflation, so essentially zero cost there, yet paying down almost $700 of principle every two weeks. Over 5 years, that is almost $90k of equity built in a payment that would otherwise go to renting. That is a meaningful sum of money to a household looking to dip its toe into a safe bet on real estate.

Renovation update

Finally some photogenic progress at the townhouse renovation. We have paint, carpet, hardwood, countertops, tile, faucets and now a fabulous entry chandelier. Hard to install too!

Really coming together now

Finishing the second side

The final stages always drag on a little longer than a person would plan for. Despite this slowing pace of progress we are still advancing the last details until we can start the cleaning process. Cleaning this early just results in having to clean almost on a daily basis and getting really upset when what you’ve just paid to have cleaned gets dusty again. The amount of money you can spend and have undone in front of you is always demoralizing. It always looks so good when it comes out of the box and the protective packaging comes off, and then dust. This holds particularly true for those matte black shower fixtures. They get filthy immediately like a dust magnet.

Just waiting on the shower door and we are done this bathroom. Plus a little more cleaning…

More useless asbestos trivia

After much adventuring in asbestosland, which is everywhere Calgary, we can explore the many types and forms of this nasty pox on our builders. First of all vermiculite is that nasty rat sh@t looking stuff you see underneath a layer of modern pink batt. Not all vermiculite has asbestos but it is treated as if it does. I was looking at a recent sample and it showed that my very own vermiculite contained some 1% Actinolite. So I thought that’s great, no chrysotile so we are good to go. Alas the Actinolite is the contaminant in the vermiculite and it has the nastiest properties of needle shaped fibres that are the prime carcinogen.

Someone slept peacefully under this vermiculite for the past hundred years. What a nasty surprise you’d get if you wanted to cut in a pot light !

bungalow dejavu

Time for another discussion on construction - is it fate or coincidence. This is a tale of an identical homes built in drastically different Calgary locations. I’ve now done enough deals that the original bungalows are blurring together into a maze of bad carpet and nasty bathrooms, but one recent series of bungalow deals stands out. Last year we renovated a 1960s bungalow in the southeast, it was in original condition. We got to know that bungalow really well because we took out some walls and re did the basement from scratch. The end result was a decrepit tear down revitalized into a bright and clean open concept bungalow ready for another generation of home owners to enjoy. The land value and neighbourhood was not particularly valuable so the renovation made a lot of sense, we even had a grand scheme to do a garage lane house, but never actually went through with it (too much time and cost to justify it). Recently we bought another identical bungalow, it was very strange to walk through it (was like a time machine) and to see how it had been renovated and modified (hardly at all) over the decades. In contrast to the major renovation project we did, this was all land value and saving the house never entered the equation. This was unfortunate because we knew exactly what to do to rebuild that floorplan, essentially it would have been the least risky renovation ever because we’d already largely perfected it the first time around. This goes to demonstrate that you can never gain too much knowledge in this industry because you can’t predict what will happen and what kind of deal will present itself to you. In this instance the renovation knowledge we gained will not be used, but the semi detached building knowledge will be instrumental. We can use the same designs, the same schedule and budget, and so on. This reduces a lot of the risk and increases my confidence in the eventual outcome. We also get to tweak the plans, so we can go from k35 version 1.0 to version 2.0 quite quickly, and efficiently. The experience of building 1.0 is really fresh in my mind so the tweaks will be really powerful to just make it a little better here and there. This is an advantage the tract home builders have over me, they can do the same house 50x, end result is a near perfect and efficient home to replicate. I have been doing custom after custom, and the one-offs don’t lend themselves to any sort of scale or reduced stress for the builder.

So we had an interesting experience with bungalow dejavu, and in the near future hopefully a sense of semi detached dejavu as we tear down and rebuild k35 into p35.

bungalow with interior partition removed and replaced by engineered beam. if circumstances were different we could have repeated this renovation at the new bungalow. instead we are tearing it down and replicating the semi detached project from Killarney.

anatomy of a deal

I’ve discussed in the past the ugliness that can surround the inner city land deal. Essentially all the fangs come out to extract that sweet nectar at the time of transaction of the funds, and we are talking about a percentage of a property up for grabs. Those that want that money the most have little to no work to do and just fill in blanks on a software that contains all the boiler plate legalities. Somehow this costs the deal that infamous ‘7 and 3’ because the value of the work done bears no relationship to the time invested. That percentage is really equity, the value that a home owner could have spent decades accumulating in little mouse sized bites, month after month of saving and sacrifice and planning, while the note holder carved off its share, and tax bill increased regularly beyond inflation, the roof and water tank eventually needed done, while the market cycled up and down. All that is bartered over when the time comes that a property must go to the highest bidder, a final and irreversible contract that comes down to a simple six digit number (usually). At least for the properties I have been buying lately, the circumstances tend to include an owner who had held the property personally or as a rental for a very long time. The terms of the deal are so simple that a contract could be drawn up on a single page, but, this is not how it works. The buyer and seller could do it face to face without any intermediary, but again, this is not how we do it. Various strategies are deployed by the builder depending on the temperature of the market and eventually the deal gets made. I've found the fewer parties involved the easier it can be. The intermediaries can act as deal bullies because they want to prove how important they are (to justify the cost to involve them) and become obstacles themselves to making the deal. Other times it all goes well and the roadblocks get smoothed over by playing with the price. Such is the case is what we are going to call the parkdale deal. Sounds like we go from K35 to P35, another bizarre coincidence or is this construction fate?

A deal gets done and everyone knows what happens next…

taking the contextual rules out of context

Here is a post long-weekend philosophy question, should the contextual rules, as we currently know them, continue to apply in the developed areas? Note that the zoning bylaw lacks a clear definition of ‘contextual’ on its own, I looked for one. It does refer to ‘contextual’ frequently in terms of height and front setbacks, but excludes architectural style. So contextual as we know it in Calgary applies much less to the design of the building than its placement and roof height (and shape to some extent).

In the classic grid communities, mainly within the rc2 or rc1 zone, bungalows were built in the centre of the plot, meaning smallish back yards and large front lawns. When building today, we tend to want the opposite. That is small front setbacks and larger backyards and more space between the house and lane accessed garage. I vastly prefer the streetscape with homes brought toward the sidewalk, and keep in mind the city usually retains ownership of the first 1-2 meters of space between the sidewalk and the private property line. This further accentuates front setbacks.

This was all decided when land was cheap and plentiful in new suburbs close the city core. Now we have the opposite situation, land is scarce and costly, often priced at $10k per ft of frontage or $100 per square ft of dirt (and up), this is expensive but far less than other Canadian cities. I have had prior infill work negatively impacted by having to setback a new semi detached home adjacent to a very tiny and old house that was in poor condition. End result was the contextual rules led to the new house being set back well into the site and the front lawn was larger than the rear, it appeared that the hose was built in the wrong spot to the eventual buyers, and it created more shade in the property next door.

I would prefer less regulation of new building, and some small modifications to how we do contextual planning. If a new build is to be built beside a very old home with little to no economic value (note some old houses have a negative value of land value minus the cost to remediate and remove), it does not make sense to retain historic setback patterns. For example the old house next door that forces new building to be further set back than optimal could be demolished itself a year or two later, perpetuating a new generation of building with all of the new builds also set back too far. This is just entrenching malinvestment for the next hundred years and undermines the vast amount of work that it takes to rebuild a street one house at a time.

Some rule changes were made on corner lots in RCG type row house builds where the setback issue was even more acute - buildings pushed right up against the garage), yet these would have a large and unused green space at the street not even designed as an outdoor amenity. This was a smart policy move because it gave a lot of numerical guidance of how much a row house project could be pulled to the street. It will also be interesting to see what the upcoming guidebook for great communities has to say about contextual setback.

In multifamily areas undergoing a transition to redevelopment, having any kind of contextual rules is basically impossible. If there was a rigid adherence to contextual rules then nothing could ever be built, and that is an outcome clearly nobody wants. In my view, a mixture of built forms in the inner city it totally appropriate. Walk up flats (almost missing in our infill areas), townhomes, semi’s, and singles can all peacefully coexist. This is a benefit of the new guidebook, it seems to recognize that a homogenous enclave of single detached homes with rigid zoning results in homes that can only be replaced by bigger and more expensive single homes. There is no better way to achieve segregation by economic class within a city than by perpetuating that cycle of only allowing more and more exclusive homes to occupy the lands with the greatest locational appeal (and value). The current trend of nominating mainstreets for city led land use change, and now local area plans (bundling a group of communities together to remove the dated ARP review cycle) has been to me, thus far, continued the trend of ‘ring fencing’ the ‘desirable’ centres of our communities with peripheral density. My objective is to see community built around a vibrant centre, not from the outside in.

here is an extreme example of two buildings with little contextual relationship

Attic Rain, revisited again

In a post last year we discussed so called ‘attic rain’ where humid air from the home escapes into the attic cavity where it can phase change, i.e. freeze, into ice from vapour. As it freezes, the moist air solidifies onto the most conductive surfaces first, like nails from shingles, ducts, and webbing on the trusses, and eventually all over the roof sheathing. It can later thaw, all at once during a warming phase, and phase change again, i.e it melts and becomes dripping water and this leaks into the house below. Calgary is the epicentre of this due to the extreme cold we can encounter which is often followed by warming chinook winds. We can have temperature swings of 40 celcius over a 24 hour period, this results in all attic frost melting, at once.

The obvious question is what do to about this. First is prevention. Seal up the poly vapour barrier in the ceiling, the most likely leakage villains are duct penetrations, pot lights, speakers, bath fans, and random damage in the poly. There are also countless staple and drywall screw holes that I believe act as ‘fugitive’ emissions of humidity into the attic. On a newly built home prevention is not really an option. All leak prone areas are covered over by drywall and inside the attic by the loose fill. Repairs can be attempted with some difficultly because it is hard to identify leaks, and all leak susceptible areas are well covered and hard to diagnose.

I argued in a previous post that some humidity leakage is just a by-product of having such a dire thermocline (as much as 60 Celsius) between ‘in house’ temperature and humidity, and ‘in attic’ temperature and dryness. The natural forces that compel heat and water to move across a gradient this extreme are powerful. Accepting that some leakage will happen, I suggested that adding air intake is a good option. This means more perforated soffit, more vents low down on the roof, and possibly stronger exhaust higher up such as ‘max vents’ or ‘whirly birds’. Alas city rules do not help here as intake from the side of new houses is not allowed due to fire code rules. However, once a home is complete and occupied, it isnt necessarily a bad idea to ‘create’ some intake vent where these were not allowed during the building stage.

Upon much further reflection and research from practicing building scientists with vast experience in this area, I think it is also worth pointing out other causes of attic frost. One culprit is powerful furnace motors that push air upward, along with the ‘stack' effect, and result in positive house pressure. Positive house pressure is like a hair dryer blowing hot air against those tiny or not so tiny defects in the poly vapour seal. Balancing the furnace can help here.

If the only solution needed to be applied was more intake, then you could argue that frost buildup could be managed at any location via adding intake. Due to the severe cold weather we have, too much intake and exhaust will not help prevent frost accumulation. At -30C, any humidity that gets into the attic will freeze before it can safely exhaust into the outside. In older less well insulated homes, the attic wouldn’t get as cold, so humidity would freeze a little slower. We now have homes where there is no difference between inside attic temperature and outside conditions. We’ve all seen those youtube videos were someone throws a glass of water into the air and it freezes before it hits the ground. This is the same issue happing inside the attic of a house at -30.

Intake and exhaust will at least allow moisture in the attic to dry faster, which is definitely something we want to happen during weather that goes from super cold to very mild. So while intake is needed, it is not going to solve all of our problems.

Clearly we need some better solutions to deal with this challenge which means better air sealing products installed before the drywall. Consultants offer blower door tests where they depressurize the house and measure where the leakage is and use a thermal camera to identity and rectify issues. The trades need to be more careful, especially electricians that are running wires through the poly into lights and vents, and the builder needs to be vigilant. I’d love to hear some more success stories from roofers and other contractors that have been successful in mitigating high frost conditions.

this is an attic cavity with a little too much frost for comfort. This is as severe as winter can be in this region, around a week of minus 30 Celsius conditions have resulted in this frost accumulation under the roof sheathing.

Custom shower building

The master bathroom offers a great opportunity to add some style to a room that could be quite plain. The tile lineups generally include a decor piece which seamlessly integrates with the field tiles. In this case we are installing the 12 x 12 decor pieces on one wall and the ceiling. I think it looks fantastic.

Big impact !

Townhouse renovation project

We purchased a ten year old townhouse in Cranston. The interior was quite drab and dated. We will be giving it a comprehensive cosmetic makeover. Much of the materials and techniques used will mimic what is found in the much bigger budget inner city projects. This should be a fairly quick process and will lead to a serious update to the interior. Lots of progress photos will be posted as the job moves along. We were already contacted and were falsely accused of dumping trash in the communal bin. This is strange because we don’t even know how to open the coded door on the storage area and the type of trash dumped in that area was not what we are working with at this time. Maybe they should review their own camera footage. I am sympathetic though, I hate it when people toss their junk in my bin too.

Not much remains of this bathroom. We will build it back up soon.

Politics, the defining characteristic of inner city development regulation in Calgary

Note this is version 2.0. I saw some awful looking grammar. Also wanted to say more good stuff about Council because they do make a lot of good calls and it can’t be easy being in that position.

For this evenings’ philosophical debate, we are going to discuss how new development, particularly related to inner city building in Calgary is regulated. Many communities have dated plans and current land use a relic of a postwar era that bears little relationship to todays societal organization. Other communities have had plenty of revisions including recent plan revisions, but still don’t reflect market conditions and were formed in large part by a ‘ring fence’ the ‘valued’ core sentiment so prevalent in community engagement discussions (and yes I have railed against this in the past as I view it as a planning fiasco, my belief is communities should be planned around a vital heart). A naive person, such as myself, would assert that the physical characteristics of a property (generally its location, size and amenities) would determine the best land use (and built form) when the time comes to redevelop. The locational and infrastructural qualities that are valuable today would ultimately determine which old shacks are demolished and where new investment is guided. But we know this is not the case, or at least I have now seen enough to form my own perspective. My view is that politics is the defining factor in deciding who can build what, where and when. Unfortunately politics concentrates power in the hands of our politicians and away from evidence based decision making that I would prefer. I have made some favourable comments toward our Council and its voting in the past, often this Council does make good decisions. Unfortunately, they are just as likely to make awful decisions, or decisions that make no sense and can really be construed as anti-business. The most ‘pro-business’ platform politicians are by far the most likely to vote in a manner that negatively impacts small business and inner city redevelopment and the jobs and economic stimulation that goes along with every project. This creates a sort of cognitive dissonance in my head that lacks a coherent explanation. I find myself ‘onside’ with the socialist leaning Councillors in this planning game, all the time! (and rarely with the most conservative trio).

Council will vote majority in favour of a drive through franchise next to a train station under the guise that this is somehow a ‘step toward transit oriented development’. This same group will then vote against a townhouse project one block from a train station (with low ridership) and no parking lot. Approving that project would have allowed more people to live within the train station walkable catchment. The lack of consistency in voting is totally maddening and really harmful to risky investment decisions. Council would spend massive sums on public transit and then vote against tiny projects that would allow more homes to be integrated into areas served by the new transit investment. There are many examples of this in Calgary we could highlight. For now, here are some of the worst characteristics of the Council we have today;

• votes against its own policy - Council will establish a bold policy about shifting development from Greenfield sprawl to inner city redevelopment. A redevelopment project is proposed by an entrepreneur and is then destroyed by the same Council that created the redevelopment favourable policy.

• ignores professional advice from planners - for political reasons, the Council will play political games that allow them to vote against the advice from their expert planning staff. You know, the highly paid staffer with the master degree in urban design, that individual is just there to warm a chair because the politicians know best.

• lack of understanding of development - there are certain members on Council that have a very poor understanding of inner city development, yet, because they are on Council, have a binding vote. Even worse are the long time members that havent learned much after multiple terms on the job and have collected large salaries and pension obligations funded by the same people they undermine with anti-development decisions. This is unfortunately now displayed in the voting record of some on Council

• predetermining outcomes based on ideology - some on Council don’t need to attend a hearing to weigh evidence, they could have emailed in their vote from weeks earlier. They simply vote the same way each time regardless of the quality of the application.

• posturing and pandering - too often some on Council will make the wrong decision to appease an audience they want to appeal to. The betterment of the city is less a priority than politics.

• Playing favourites - some on Council have clear favourite applicants that get preferential treatment. Again politics is a greater factor than the merit of a project. There is truly a different bar that can be raised or lowered depending on the applicant.

This is such a demoralizing topic, I must end it now lest I fall into some deep depression. Basically, the process of leaving these decisions in the hands of a Council that so often makes bad decisions is how planning takes place today. Will the next generation planning regulatory system to be delivered by the ‘Guidebook for great communities’ solve some of this, along with the new generation local area plans? I hope so.

* Now is the time to highlight some good behaviour on Council. My own favourite Councillor goes by the name of GC. I think he is great on these planning matters. I don’t follow his other responsibilities on Council very closely, but from what I have seen, he makes exceptional, consistent decisions in line with his vision of building great communities. He is unafraid and unapologetic to call out ridiculous nimby stuff, and he challenges limiting beliefs. He must be exhausted by this constant battle of redeveloping tiny inner city properties. Special mention also goes to Councilor Druh Farrell, she has shown a lot of consistency as a supporter of change compatible with smart inner city redevelopment. Finally, while I have not seen too many votes involving Councillor Jyoti Gondek, I think she’s on board, and, while not an inner city resident, has the planning commission background which is a great training ground for a Councillor. Mayor Nenshi, mixed reviews just due to how dismissive he can be of policy and small business risk takers when it suits his mood at the time of a vote.

Appliance install underway

Any wall mounted appliance involves some trickery to get it fitted properly. I have noted this over the years and always tried to be mindful of this when the time comes to installation. The trim kit must be aligned between cabinets and attempts to ensure it is flush with doors and coordinated with the oven below always seems to cause difficulty. This is typical of any kind of construction where a job is completed and the following job depends on the precision of the earlier step. Often no amount of builder coordination and information delivery to the contractors can eliminate install issues. We will see how this unfolds shortly at the Killarney project. One side is just about done now and the other is a solid three weeks or more behind. This will get us to interior completion, we will have a lot of seasonal type work remaining to catch up in April, if April cooperates, and sometimes that delayed spring can be quite painful for the builders landscaping and stucco finishing schedule.

Microwave and trim kit going in …

Custom barn door install

Another custom touch is installed at the k35 project. I ordered a barn door slab to my own specifications from a local barnwood recycling and furniture making business. It took about six weeks to be prepared but I get the precise height and width to cover my front entry closet. One criticism you hear of new builds is they can be too cold or sterile. This is the flip side of creating a showtime for a client you haven’t yet met that is somewhat of a blank canvas. Is it wise to spend the approximate cost of 7 regular interior doors just to get one showpiece? I think so. In construction the good stuff always costs way way more than a mass produced item.

Everyone gets happy when the finished materials get installed. I get more happy when the sewer and gas lines are connected. I find that stuff a lot more difficult to manage than a finishing piece.

The unintended consequences of custom work

Much discussion has occurred on this site over the years regarding the domino effect of construction management where a schedule can be massively impacted by a single incident such as a late product delivery or a labour delay. The likelihood of such delays occurring and then a cascade of unintended consequences impacting future scheduled work increases dramatically once you venture into the unknown territory of highly custom detailed work.

One may consider my entire project to be highly custom detailed work, so how then am I not constantly subject to ridiculously over budget and over time house builds? I think this is because the initial stages of the project can be a lot more similar for any type of build than the final stages. Some parts such as drywall are basically the same in any project I would tackle, the board gets hung, the joints are taped, and so on. Another factor is experience that tells me what to expect from my crews in terms of production and pace. I have used some crews many times, so they dont deviate much from job to job.

The current stair project has been a very interesting wildcard in terms of timing. We got off to a very slow start, some of the components I thought were to be pre-fab actually became ‘site fab’, and, just due to the nature of having no stairs in place, complementary work cannot occur that would buffer us from schedule delays. So basically with this custom project, everything must totally be shuttered at the site except for the ongoing stair work which started January 9th and is now nearly done after two weeks. My schedule only factored in a much shorter install period that actually was supposed to end by January 9th, so all momentum and previously arranged work is in a bit of disarray.

I think what I have learned here, again, as if I didn’t know this before, is that custom work cannot be rushed and will not necessarily cooperate with a prearranged schedule. It is best to allocate a bigger buffer and avoid booking future work until you’ve got a better estimate on completion. While this doesn't lend itself to efficient use of the calendar, it is going to, in the end, be less discruptive

With the railings now being installed we can safely say we are at the end of the stairs project. Just staining and glazing remains and, for the glass part, which can be done any time in the next few weeks, we won’t have any issue with schedule conflicts or delays.

A whole big stack of treads

Another phase of our marathon stair building campaign is reached as we continue to push on to completing the second unit stair project. With the treads on site we can stain and clear coat them for final install. With tread install comes railing install. And finally railing stain. Another week and we should be done. The stair project will add a good three weeks to the schedule but will be a fantastic amenity for the clients so we can justify the time and cost.

Ready to stain.

And the treads are all stained and prepared to be bolted in place.

Infill building bellwether posts demoralizing comment on operational viability

Rndsqr, a homegrown smallish and growing company posted a comment on its hardship in scaling a viable townhouse business. It declared it is out of the rcg land use change and rowhouse building business due to time, fees and engagement expectations. While I’m not completely surprised I am still feeling a little shocked and saddened by this turn of events. They remain a really ambitious and innovative operator but they are stating publicly that they can’t make a go of it. This is a blow to the council and planning department that has policy in place to support this type of development. Unfortunately the policy does not provide meaningful help to the builders and often a land use application is like a war of 50 ft of city building with a community of activists and self appointed nimbys. All this while major greenfield sprawl projects sail through without proportionally equal scrutiny for entire new subdivisions. I’ve noted many times how much greater the engagement expectation is with applicants being hit with demands for full dp ready designs to be submitted along with the land use application. This is called a ‘concurrent’ application because the dp is submitted along with the land use change. I think this concurrent process works for a builder with a large budget because the reward is a quicker process. For anyone else it is just another obstacle to reducing risk. Worst case is you create a custom plan and fund a big design project and the land use fails. Then you are losing tens of thousands of additional dollars.
As an inner city specialist rndsqr made its mark in many communities with the rowhouse product it rolled out in quantities I thought unimaginable a few years ago. This pivot is a major shift for it as it focuses now on medium rise buildings like courtyard 33 in marda loop. I’m hoping rndsqr is successful in these bigger builds or we will see a lot more of the same old cookie cutter stuff take more market share.

This is really bad news for creating more vital neighbourhoods in Calgary.

Ongoing screwups

It appears I have been cursed not twice but apparently three times by bad lighting decisions at the kitchen area of one of my sites. This is a fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me type situation except now I’m at strike three. Fortunately the builder gets as many strikes as the budget allows and my budgets are very large that I can absorb these screwups. I can reuse the light in question at another job for sure. But I do need to buy some costly new sconces.

Damn my fancy hinkley goosekneck light was located too near the shelf. The shelf was likely placed too high in the wall but I thought it would work. Guess not. Will buy something else and I’ve already got some options presented by my supplier at dhillon. Will get it right next round.