The week started with 3 different builders coming by for walkthroughs and first meetings which will give us 5 builders to choose from. It is an interesting process and i really have to watch myself and listen to what they say. It is really tempting to rush them along because we have heard all this before, but the reality is we haven’t. Learning to keep my mouth shut and listen is hard, but i am trying. Most of them do say the same things, warn us about building code requirements and what we will be required to do regardless of what we want to do. Some give wildly different guidance on things like sprinklers, or the amount of time we will be out of the house. Some don’t say things that others do and that seem significant to us. We were hoping to get back project scope documents before this weekend but only got one of them back so far.
On the recommendation of one of the builders i called a company to get an energy audit done. This is a requirement for any renovation permit in Vancouver apparently and a requirement for any grants. This is why we are having an admin weekend. The envelope of the building has to be intact for the audit so i have stopped taking of shingles and won’t be pulling off any drywall until the audit is done. We had one done in 2005 and got some rebates for the furnace, windows, and insulating we did, but that is going back a few years and now we have a much bigger scope. Rather than booking the audit for this week, the company told us about a program through the Vancouver Heritage Foundation that will actually subsidize the cost of the audit and qualify us for some additional grants. So we did that
The Heritage Energy Retrofit Grant provides from $10,000 to $14,000 for extensive energy retrofits if you are keeping the heritage fabric of your home. This is going to be a stretch for us. They really want you to keep old windows and doors but most of ours have already been replaced. There are exactly 4 original windows on the main floor of our house. The rest are vinyl replacement windows i put in, and the nasty single pain and aluminum storm on the front. I am not sure we will qualify but it is worth a shot. Part of the grant will cover an air source heat pump which could be an option for heating the basement. The application process just needs a few images, a year of utility bills and a general scope of work. it took me about 30 minutes to track it all down and submit. They have a pdf of the questionnaire you can download to prep your material before you fill out an online application. Not sure how long it will take before we approved or rejected but we want to wait for that as at the very least it will save us a few hundred dollars on the energy audit.
We also applied with the City of Vancouver for a character home designation. Again, this was a pretty straight forward online application and consists of submitting a bunch of photos of your house from different angles and in the larger context of your street. We are RS-1 zoning so the designation is optional but it could let us do more with the space or get us other considerations. Our one concern is that we do not live on a character block. We have modern homes most of the block to the east and the originals left have all been renovated more recently than ours and have lost their character features. Hope springs eternal and again we wait.
So that is about it for the week. We are printing off and reviewing the three work scopes that we have so far so that when the last 2 come in we have our questions ready. And we wait.
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