Building permit application update

The city inspector is still not happy with what we have revised and resent to them. And here’s what we have:

Clearance from the city’s forestry department on the tree protection zone.

We have satisfied forestry department and obtained the letter of clearance.

Rear deck must specify pressure treated stair-stringers spaced every 3′.

Read deck needs to be secured on ledger board.

Front concrete steps needs to be provided with footings and foundation walls.

We have marked up our drawing on all these items.

Wanted more engineering information on my green roof.

We figure the city inspector just did not want the liability. Since green roof is not needed as part of the building permit and that I have already engineered the roof to be able to support the green roof, we took it out of the building permit application so that we can move forward.

Front shade cannot project beyond the side of building.

Oddly enough city inspector regarded my shade in the front of the house as a roof and roof cannot project more than 1.5′ beyond the wall. Now this is clearly not a roof since there’s nothing under it. But since I wanted to get the application moving, and that my shade is only projecting beyond the walls by 2′. So I decided that we will mark the shade 6″ less and move forward. But really, it’s a shade, not a roof!

The north wall that’s only 1′ away from the property needs to be non-combustible clad and fire rated.

Areas of opening on the side wall needs to provide compliance to Ontario Building Code.

We have talked to Dryvit System and decided that we will go with Dryvit Exolation 5000 system on the north wall and Dryvit Statum Guard II system for the rest of the walls. The Dryvit Exolation 5000 system is fire rated and satisfies the necessary codes. We have included the technical specification for both Dryvit system with our building permit.

Closed cell foam insulation on the underside of the roof needs to conform to standard.

We enclosed PolarFoam PF-7300-0 SOYA technical specifications and CCMC report with the building permit.

Some clarification on the structure steel.

This is really odd. Apparently the city inspector does not understand the structural steel to the east of the bedroom. It’s for the balcony. Yes I know balcony supported by structural steel is not common, but it is clearly marked on the architectural drawing that there’s a balcony after the bedroom. And yes my balcony is cantilevered and therefore it is supported by structural steel.

Forestry clearance

Today we received the letter of clearance from the Toronto Parks, Forestry & Recreation department. This is related to the tree protection barrier that we have built at the end of August. I had my architect submitted the site plan on how the trees will be protected and the photos of my tree protection barrier. One step closer to my building permit now.

Building a tree protection barrier

So one of the requirement from the city for issuing the permit is to build a tree protection barrier around the protected tree. Like the one illustrated below. After some back and forth with the forestry department, it seems that all we need to do is to build a 4′ tall fence 6 m away from the tree using orange webbing.

Tree Protection Barrier

So together with my cousin we sent out to build the fence.

Continue reading ‘Building a tree protection barrier’ »

Building permit application update

So I got my hopes too high last time. Apparently there’s plenty of issues the city inspector has with my building plan. The status on the building permit is being refused and there are a lot of things that they wanted us to address.

Building Permit Status

The major point that the city inspectors want us to address are:

  • Clearance from the city’s forestry department on the tree protection zone.
  • Rear deck must specify pressure treated stair-stringers spaced every 3′.
  • Read deck needs to be secured on ledger board.
  • Front concrete steps needs to be provided with footings and foundation walls.
  • Front shade cannot project beyond the side of building.
  • They wanted more engineering information on my green roof.
  • The north wall that’s only 1′ away from the property needs to be non-combustible clad and fire rated.
  • Areas of opening on the side wall needs to provide compliance to Ontario Building Code.
  • Closed cell foam insulation on the underside of the roof needs to conform to standard.
  • Some clarification on the structure steel.

Building permit application update

It’s August 15th. Checked my building permit application status and it says it’s under review. Which is good news for me. I am really counting on trying to get started sometime in September. It saying under Zoning Review “Notice Sent”. Not sure what it means, since I didn’t receive anything as of yet. I’m not sure if they are sending the notice to my architect or to me. But at least there’s progress on it. Now only if I get through the new house code review quickly.

Building Permit Status 2013-08-15

 

Building permit application underway

Yes my building permit application is in the city’s computer system now. The usual turn around time is 4-6 weeks. So hopefully by end of August I would have the building permit and can start to schedule demolition work. The tenant will move out on August 27. So I would say it is nearly perfect timing. Hopefully I can get demolition done quickly and get all the concrete work in before the weather turn too cold.

Building Permit Status

Building permit application submitted

Today is the last day of July. I have finally gathered all the files with proper signature on them. So here we go again to the city’s building department to submit the application for building permit. This time everything went smoothly. The computers are working, and we didn’t miss any critical files. We still missed an Energy Efficiency Design Summary, but we can submit that later. So after about an hour and half, the building permit application is submitted. The cost of the building permit application is just shy of $3000.

And so here is The Big Marshmallow House design as submitted for permit.

Site plan:

Architect 1

Continue reading ‘Building permit application submitted’ »

The new city zoning bylaw

Yesterday I was at the city hall trying to submit the building permit application for my house. That didn’t work out since we are missing some signatures in the files. However I did overheard another conversion that the city has already enacted on the new City of Toronto Zoning By-law 569-2013 on May 9, 2013. I must been too busy working my real job and designing the house in the past few month that I didn’t even notice that the new zoning by-law is now official.

The good thing about this new zoning by-law is that now you can finally look up all the by-law text online and look up the zoning maps on line. I will no longer have to wait for hours just to find what zoning code is assigned to my property. And I will no longer have to go to the city hall and flip through the pages in a binder to find relevant by-law text. (I searched high and low but simply can’t find Easy York zoning by-law 6752 text anywhere online.) This is great for someone who want to start their major building project to find all the relevant information. So here we are, point your browser to http://www.toronto.ca/zoning/ and you can find all the necessary zoning information right at your finger tip.

However, as I was scanning through the new zoning by-law text, I found that the new zoning by-law actually puts a serious restriction on balcony in the Residential Detached (RD) zone. See By-law 569-2013 10.20.40.50, it has indicated that in the RD zone, there can only be a maximum of one deck/balcony on each side of the house, and any deck/balcony with access from the second storey or above can only have a maximum of 4.0 square metres each. So what this means is that if you want a balcony that you can sit on, which should be probably around 4′ – 5′ deep, you can only have it 8 ‘ – 10′ wide. The balcony that I designed for my house that’s 5′ deep and 19’ wide will no longer be acceptable in Toronto. As for my house, there is a transition protocol, which allow house that has zoning review application submitted before the May 9, 2103 to be processed under the old by-law. So I should still be able to get what I wanted.

 

Building permit application

Today the plan was to try to submit our application for building permit. There are still some minor adjustments, but my architect said that we’ll just get it done after we get the building permit application in. Unfortunately, the wind is not blowing in the right direction today. First of all, the city’s building department’s computer system is down. And then when they went through the files, they found that some of our files did not have engineer’s signature on them. So we were not able to get the application submitted. Now I have to chase after a few people to make sure I get the signature on those files. Hopefully I get all that sorted out next week and we can get the application in before the end of July.

Joist layout

The month of June was spent going back and forth with structural engineer (Ben of ABM Engineering) and my architect (Charles Schwenger). There are a lot of things to consider in terms of how the beam impacts the wall design, how we want to secure the joist to the beam, and how we will run the ducts. But more importantly, I was spending a lot of time working on my real job. Now we are in July, we are really getting close to the time I hope to start actually building the house which is some time in August/September. Good news is that we got most of the issues worked out and we are ready to work on the joist layout. Joe Di Paola from RONA is the man for the job. And hopefully I can get the joist layout done soon and get my building permit application submitted.