About A House - Prefab II

It's now Mar 29, prefab is at its final stages and the SIP roof is being delivered for installation next week.  The SIP roof is another "Green" element in our design. Although not necessarily required construction material for R2000 standard, but since we're taking back the space in the attic for our use in a big way, our project is ideal as we wouldn't be able to insulate the attic like a traditional house.

Here's some more pictures of happenings in past couple of weeks!

Prefab framing being delivered... there are videos but needs editing.

All the outside and inside walls come in prefab panels that just get fitted together on site.  Within 2 hours, all the outside walls of the first story was up.

The inside walls of the first floor took another day. We walked through and got a feel of the room partitions for the first time. So amazing!

The ceiling of the first floor being constructed. The floor support beams are measured and cut on site to make sure it fits properly.

Once the ceiling of the first floor is completed, the second floor exterior walls went on like a snap! This is front of the house on Mar 15.

The back...

Inside walls, all rooms partitioned. Ceiling being built to support the top floor.

Exterior front entry is also built on site.

On Mar 23, we have the top floor!

On Mar 26, we have staircase!! This is the first time I get to go up and see the whole house from the inside!! We can practically move in & camp!

This is our living room. It's a little messy at the moment.

View from the living room...

The roof line is being prep for the SIP roof arrival next week.

There are another week of minor adjustments and alignment to be done by the prefab framing team. Otherwise, they are basically done!

About A House - Prefab

As part of the green aspect of this house, prefab for framing was on the table from the get go. Since we were pretty behind schedule by the time we got our permits, framing on site was tossed right out the window!

A couple of local prefab companies were engaged for quotations and we ended up going with Apex Wall Panel in Langley. Their projects are usually multi-family large projects where the cost and time saving of prefab is dramatic. We feel pretty privileged that they are involved in our project as it probably isn't the best use of their resources from a profitability perspective.

The time saver in doing prefab is we can started framing while our foundation was still being constructed vs the conventional way of starting framing only after foundation. The first story of our house was already waiting to be delivered at the prefab warehouse by mid feb.  The second story was started after our slab on grade was poured.  To take advantage of prefab our design needed to be finalized early with detailed drawings available. Once the drawings are submitted for prefab, changes to the design would cause delay and potential errors.

There is no amount of words that can describe how we felt when the prefab framing started. First let's give you a perspective of our frame of mind... up to this point, it took 9 months to get our permits & then we've been watching cement forming out of a mud pit for 2 months.  Foundation was finished on Mar 6. Here's the site an hour after the first floor was delivered on Mar 8...

All the exterior walls for the first floor was up within 2 hours! I love this pictures of when they delivered the wall panels of the first floor. Yes! Finally! The house!! LOL!

The frame of the entire house except the roof is supposed to be done in under 2 weeks.

About A House - Design Variance Application

Boy! It's been a couple of really busy weeks for us! The reason why you haven't seen any update isn't because of lack of progress or topics. We were informed by the owner of our ex-house (we're renting back) that they're planning to list the house on the market. Since the new house is far from ready, we're probably better off finding another place to live for the next few months. That's what we've been running around organizing...

Remember the Ceraclad rejection for our permit? We worked on the variance application after the new year and got our variance approved on Feb 15. Before giving the details of what all that entailed... here's a quick overview and some pretty interesting residential applications of this material around the NorthWest.

Seattle Single Family Residential
A house posted by EcoMajority
Renovated house in Napa - the pictures didn't load in my browser so here's the designer ... this project is Napa Residence 3. Check out the WOW project, Ross Residence while you're at it!

Okay, enough eye candy! Back to the variance application. The process was actually not all that painful for us as Wilma, our designer did all the leg work for the application.  We were aiming for the Feb 15 meeting with deadline of all submission by Jan 23.

The list of submission material included writeup of the justification for the variance, sample Ceraclad material with example of mountings, structural engineering endorsements, canvassed neighbours' signature of endorsement.

Among other considerations, the Board of Variance must be satisfied that:

• The strict application of the by-law would impose an unreasonable restraints or unnecessary hardship on the use or development of the property;
• The special circumstances giving rise to hardship upon which an appeal is used are unique to the property in questions.

What's our angle then? It's to focus on the low maintenance and durability aspects of the material as we would like to limit the amount of effort required to continually paint, upkeep and preserve the exterior cladding.

There were letters sent from the city to all the neighbours regarding our applications and a site visit by the board prior to the decision meeting.

So what did we had to do exactly? We carried the sample material around and canvassed for signatures over the course of a couple of weekends and managed to meet some really terrific neighbours! We got 9 signatures in total; almost everyone on our side of the street. Across the way turned out to be mostly rentals.

Cost of variance application: $1000 to city of Vancouver and a few hundreds for the all the supporting materials.

About A House - Estimating Cost & Schedule

Whenever we get into a chat regarding this house, 2 topics always come up: cost and schedule. It's comical as we used to bombard Arthur & Wilma with them at the start of the project. Our friends hits us with the same questions and then we ask our friends about their projects.  It's like a circular chain that has no clear answer.

Here's what we've learned from these conversation. There is no definitive number, there is only the range of where the final number will land depending on a long list of factors. For cost, the yard stick is price/sq ft. Generally speaking, the larger the home the better the economy of scale; as the overall cost is being divided by more square footage.

Total cost includes construction costs and soft costs. Often times construction cost is confused with total costs. Soft cost is non construction costs that are necessary; it includes builder fees, permits, design, misc engineering certifications, etc. It can be upwards of $50/ sq ft. No small change!

Construction cost depends greatly on the size and structural design of the house; which dictates the construction material to be used and complexity of the build. For our house, the R2000 specification would add cost but it is offset by the open concept and simple design. Finishing materials significantly influence cost. An appliance package can range from less than $5000 to over $50,000. A kitchen faucet is anywhere between $79 to $2500.

A builder of a subdivision would be able to swing volume deals that can drive the cost down to a range of $90 to $120/sq ft. For individual home owners, we can definitely expect to allocate a much bigger budget. A friend who plans to manage his own project expects his total cost to be between $150 to $175/sq ft. Using a builder that builds higher end of the mid range homes will likely be within $200 to $225/sq ft.  We've seen a 3500 sq ft house with a budget of $400/sq ft. Sky is the limit here!

Ours we believe will be within the range of $250 to $275/sq ft. The best way to manage the overall budget post permit is to validate actual cost versus initial estimate for each stage of the build. Overrun in the early stages can only be offset by less expensive finishing once it gets going. It's advantageous to pick an alternate choice of finishings just in case! Once all the finishings are ordered, the only manoeuvre would be to trim from the landscaping and dip deeper into the funds...

Now that we're partially into the project, Arthur & Wilma no longer get the "how much will the house cost?" question from us anymore. Instead, we ask how much a specific quote for a particular item, like the roof, is going to be and watch the spend vs initial estimates like a hawk!

The answer to the schedule question of "When can we move in?" is also a range as it is greatly influence by house size & design, weather condition during the early stages and availability of trades and material for all stages. These factors combined can add 2 to 3 months to a project easy! A small project like ours probably is 6 to 9 months depending on how lucky we are!

All will reveal itself at the end of the projects.... if they hit the lower end, we'll be breathing a big sigh of relief!