Leggo my foundation

We are happy to report that the footings have been poured, and work to build the foundation has begun. For those that haven't spent the last seven months talking about construction stuff, footings are the things your foundation sits on. You want to get those just right. Our guys have been confronted with unforeseen challenges for the last week or so, but it looks like the foundation is getting underway. As we mentioned in a previous post, our foundation will be made of insulated concrete forms (ICF). They look a lot like lego (hard to tell in the picture at left since they're mostly still in boxes), and we've heard good things about how easy they are to work with. We're hoping the foundation will be complete within a week, but I hear we're expecting 20 centimetres of snow tonight, so we'll have to play it by ear, as usual.

We were also the targets this week of a unique form of protest. Our builders arrived on-site one morning to find a bunch of old pots and pans thrown into the back of our lot. This actually happened. I still can't believe it — pots and pans! I'm not sure how successful this measure has proven for our local demonstrator in the past, but we remain undeterred. A colleague of mine suggested that perhaps they were a housewarming present, and that the gracious donor was just too shy to deliver them in the usual way. Hahahaa! Perhaps.

One last thing: we've been in touch with the editor of our local community newspaper, and she's invited us to contribute an article on our construction project. We're aiming for the April issue, and will be sure to include the link here.

Forward, ho!

Excavation complete!

We're happy to report that the excavation is now complete, and our builder is ready to put in the footings and foundation this week and next. For various reasons, we're a few days behind schedule, but we're hoping that we won't lose too many more days. We're also happy to finally have a daylight photo to include. Those orange tarps are there to help insulate the ground.

You might notice that the basement doesn't appear that deep; I think the hole is about six feet. Rest assured we are not planning on renting the basement bachelor apartment to smurfs; the ceiling will actually be a bit above grade, as much as two feet. I'll have to consult our handy drawings for the details.

John and I spent some time tonight picking our interior stairs. Although the basic design was done months ago, we had some decisions to make about the treads, railings, and a lot of other components I can't remember the names for. The choices were pretty easy to make, since most of the styles seem more suited to Scarlett O'Hara's house than ours.

We expect to have more exciting photos to share very soon.

Not all neighbours are NIMBYs

I'd like at some point to recount the most significant of our ups and downs from the beginning of this great adventure, but I'm not quite ready. With Lorie away, however, I've decided to sneak in my own update. As the title suggests, it strikes a more hopeful note than the last one.

I was just paid an unexpected visit from one of our neighbours-to-be (NTB). Have we mentioned that we have an apartment half a block away from our lot? This person had asked our contractor to see the plans for our house and the latter was supposed to provide us an e-mail address to which we could send them. This hadn't happened yet, so NTB took a stroll down the street to ask us directly for a look. I was, not surprisingly, apprehensive, but the visit turned out well.

We chatted a bit and I showed him the plans. He was curious, but not demonstrative in any particular direction. He seemed pleasant, though, and went so far as to say that he didn't think the construction would bother him. He certainly wasn't critical. He gave me a bit of his background, which includes some volunteer work last summer with Habitat for Humanity, which has to be a good sign. He talked about how they were going to work on a few more houses this coming summer, so I guess he has an ongoing relationship with Habitat. I think that we'll at least be able to stay on speaking terms, if not better, with this NTB. Lorie will be very happy to know.

This fellow knew that the lot had been up for sale and had checked out the drawings that had gone with the original proposal. He also corrected me on our address, which seems to be a point of confusion not only with us, but with the City of Ottawa and the realtors we've dealt with. Lorie has put 94A Crichton, but I think it's 96A. The house from which the lot was severed is 96B, so that would make sense. When my visitor saw our announcement from last weekend, he was surprised to learn that we were planning to build on top of his house.

When we're all done, we'll want to show off the fruits of all our labours and anxieties, and we'll make sure that all our non-NIMBY neighbours and friends know how to find us. It won't be hard; we'll have the newest and, we think, the prettiest little house on the block.

Jack be NIMBY

On the second day of construction, we received our first not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) response to our construction. And it was a doozy. For those unfamiliar with the term, NIMBY refers to the response sometimes given by neighbourhoods and communities to proposed development. In some cases, they don’t oppose the development in principle, they just don’t want it in their backyards. Developments subject to NIMBY opposition typically include low-income housing, group homes, dumps, and prisons. Infill constructions like ours — new buildings on previously undeveloped sites in existing neighbourhoods — are also excellent targets for NIMBY objections. While infill construction makes more efficient use of land, existing infrastructure and services, and reduces the pressure to develop outside of the city, it can also be disruptive to neighbours who have to endure construction very close by, and force them to accommodate changes they would prefer not to see.

In fact, NIMBYism is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, impediments to infill development. It’s what keeps sane people from doing what we’re doing. People don’t like change as a rule, and are especially unforgiving to change that affects their property. They worry the new construction will compromise the character of their neighbourhood, decrease their property value, generally inconvenience them, or, in the case of tall buildings like ours, restrict their light and privacy. Residents can become used to having an empty lot near them or beside them, and confuse this preference with a right to continue having it.

As we’ve learned, a seemingly rational person can become an emotional, offensive, and abusive NIMBY beast when confronted with an unwanted development. Unfortunately, reason and mutual accommodation aren’t possible when people respond on this level. (That sounds pretty patronizing, I know. My tone is probably what prompted our NIMBY resident to slam the phone down on us after berating and insulting us. Apparently I am no Dr. Phil.) Our dreams of warm, neighbourly friendships full of dinner parties and cookie exchanges might never be our reality (at least in one case) but there you have it.

What made this response a bit harder to take, even it is only one really negative response so far, was that fitting into the neighbourhood was one of our main considerations during the design process. Our lot is in one of Ottawa’s oldest communities — a beautiful, well-treed neighbourhood with many older brick homes with porches. To preserve the character of this great neighbourhood and others like it in Ottawa, a heritage committee reviews building applications and ensures that proposed construction projects fit into the streetscape. These restrictions are in addition to general city building requirements and cover things like exterior cladding (materials, colours), profile, and general style. Our designers worked with one of the city’s heritage planners to ensure that our house meets these requirements, and it does.

A little history: Before we bought our lot, another three-story home was approved to be built on it but never proceeded. When our designers first met with the city’s heritage planner early in our design process, they saw the originally approved plans for the site. We all agreed that it would be simplest to stay within the style of the approved plan and avoid having to resubmit new plans to the heritage committee for approval, which could take months. Our designers met with the planner and showed her our design until she was satisfied that our slight modifications still met the conditions of approval of the original design. Ironically, our design is actually one third smaller than the original. But “it could have been worse” is not exactly music to a NIMBY’s ears.

So, in a nutshell, our design meets the city’s general building requirements, as well as the very specific requirements of the heritage committee. Compliance with these types of guidelines, however, is of no interest to a NIMBY neighbour who can’t see beyond his or her property line. The response we’ve received, although by no means widespread, has been a very difficult one to handle, and will likely continue to be so. If we continue to get responses like this one, our house may come at a steeper cost than we had thought — not to the neighbourhood or the environment, but to our personal relationships with the people we’d hoped would become our friends.

Here’s hoping for a more neighbourly tomorrow.

Green design features

Before we get too far into the construction and start filling this space with endless pictures of backhoes (who doesn't love backhoes?), we thought it might be a good idea to put information in here about some of the features we’re most excited about.

When we decided to build, we knew we wanted to build the most energy-efficient house we could afford. Our decisions about the location, footprint and envelope of our house were among the most significant we made in terms of reducing our impact on the environment.

The big three

Location: We wanted to find a location that would be close enough for us to walk to work. Proximity to skiing, hiking trails, and canoeing was also on our wish list. We work in the market, and like to ski, hike and canoe in Gatineau Park, so downtown was the obvious choice. Land downtown, however, doesn’t come cheap. Once we found our lot in New Edinburgh and fell in love with the neighbourhood, we decided we were willing to make the necessary sacrifices to keep our construction costs down and try and compensate for the difference. This decision set the framework for all of the other decisions we had to make.

Footprint: The size of the house will also help us keep our energy use, and associated costs, down. At about 1,950 square feet, we’ll have as much space as we’ll need. Instead of building out, we’re building up. The design includes two stories in the front, and three in the back.

Envelope: To get the biggest bang for our buck, we invested the greatest proportion of our budget in everything that separates the house from the elements — the foundation, basement slab, walls, windows, doors, ceilings, roof and insulation. For our foundation and basement walls, we chose insulated concrete form (ICF) blocks. Concrete is poured into blocks between two layers of foam insulation. The blocks stabilize the interior temperature and keep the humidity out of the basement. They can also get the insulation values up to
R-50, although this is difficult to measure precisely. The higher the insulation value, the lower the energy use and cost for us. Our low-emissivity (low-e), argon-filled windows will help to keep the heat in when it’s cold and out when it’s hot. We also opted for the Cadillac of insulation: spray-in foam. The soy-based foam we picked expands in place to fill all the nooks and crannies and makes for the tightest possible house. The vapour barrier is built in, so we’ll save a bit on material costs. The house will be finished partly in brick and partly in siding. The fibre-cement siding material we chose is made out of wood pulp, cement, sand and water, is very durable and low-maintenance, and allows air circulation and drainage. Finally, we picked a durable steel roof to make sure we won’t need to replace it anytime soon. In all, the envelope is our biggest expense, but it’s the feature that will bring us the highest returns.

Other green stuff

Materials: We will use wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC); water-based adhesives and finishes; paints, caulks and adhesives with no or very low concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs); and, where we can, locally harvested or manufactured materials.

Water conservation: A rain barrel on our second-floor deck will collect rainwater for us to use to water our plants. We’re also planning on going with native and water-free vegetation for our landscaping (xeriscaping). Some people think that makes us lazy gardeners, not environmentalists. Ah, well.

Site protection and waste management: Protecting the site and managing construction waste were important considerations for us, and are built into our contract with our builder. The crew will stockpile topsoil onsite and cover it to prevent erosion, be as kind to the existing vegetation as they can be, and recycle as much of the construction waste as possible. They’ll use off-cuts where they can as blocking, bracing, or strapping to reduce waste. They’ll also collect, sort and store all of the waste materials for recycling. Leftover untreated wood will be mulched and used for ground cover. Metals (steel, aluminum, etc.), paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, metal cans, and drywall will be recycled.

Heating: We’re going with radiant floor heating. Other than the envelope, this was our biggest ticket item. A natural-gas-fuelled on-demand hot water boiler will supply heat to the radiant floor and hot water system. Because radiant floors distribute heat evenly, we’ll be able to keep the thermostat lower than we would with a forced air system (some say two to four degrees lower, but if John has anything to say about it, it will be more like five to ten degrees), which means lower energy costs. Some people estimate that we will save between 10 and 40 per cent on our energy bills with radiant floor heating. Sounds good to us. Warm, comfortable floors and better air quality sound very nice, too.

Appliances and fixtures: This part was easy. Energy-efficient appliances and dual-flush toilets are the way to go. John spent a lot of time reading the results of dual-flush toilet tests, which are conducted using soy-based feces simulants shaped into realistic, uniform shapes. Yes, you read that right. I was happy to leave that research to him.

Future possibilities: As much as we would have liked to, we couldn't do everything we wanted right away. A few features will have to come later. Among these is a solar hot water pre-heating system and insulated storage tank. A geothermal heating system may also still be in the cards; it's perfectly compatible with radiant floor heating.
*A note on geothermal: this was a feature we were very sorry to have to cut out, but after much research and calculations, we decided it just wasn’t worth the expense right now. With our envelope the way that it is, the law of diminishing returns told us it just doesn’t make sense to invest so much (about $30,000) in a heating system when our heating needs are so dramatically reduced. However, the law of really cool green technologies screamed “Go for it anyway!” In the end, we made the tough call to nix it, for now. Finally, our builder’s going to lay the groundwork for a green roof, which we will install soon. Vegetation will add extra insulation to the roof on our third story, reduce run-off, and be very nice to look at, too.

For anyone interested in reading about green construction options, I’d recommend Your Green Home: A Guide to Planning a Healthy, Environmentally Friendly New Home, by Alex Wilson. It has a lot of very good information on site location, building materials, construction techniques, and more.

Day 2: We dig it

At the end of Day 2, our hole was almost completely dug. Our lot sits on granite, so our excavator had to get out the big guns to break it up. Our builder and designer are going to select some nice pieces to keep for landscaping , and to share with our neighbours. I looked in the hole, but there were no countertops in it. I'll look again tomorrow.

Day 1: Cheers to the backhoe

At the end of the first day, John and I took over a wee bottle of champagne and two glasses to celebrate the occasion. Standing in the mud, we grinned at our lovely backhoe and toasted our future home.

The adventure begins

On January 9, 2008, the little infill lot at 94A Crichton Street became a construction site! After six intense months of designing and decision making, we finally got our building permit, signed on the dotted line with our builder and bank, and got this show on the road. We are very excited, and look forward to sharing our experience with you every step of the way. Enjoy!