We have signed with the architect and will be getting our house scanned for the “before” drawings and a survey for the site plan in the coming weeks. Not sure we knew about these costs but there you go, 1 week into the official project and we are already going over budget! Looking back the “as built” plans and survey could have been done at any time over the last year or two as we have been thinking about the project. Hopefully it doesn’t take too long because now that we signed we are ready to get onto the dreaming stage of the project. The nightmare stage doesn’t start until after we get the permits and we are less eager to start that.
Monday we went over the contracts with the lawyer. There isn’t much we can do about the Architectural Instituted of BC (AIBC) contract as that is industry standard. Likely biased to the architect but it isn’t like our little project is going to be enough to change the industry if we object. The builder contract still hasn’t been signed and we are waiting to review again with the builder. The lawyer recommended we add a few clauses to protect ourselves against liens and a few other issues. Hopefully that is not too much of a sticking point.
Scope Creep!
We spent the week getting into some scope creep which is fun. Not sure our budget will support it but we can always dream!
Scope Creep 1: Heat Pump: We had specified electric baseboard heaters for the basement. We can’t afford radiant heating and one of the builders suggested that because of the insulated foundation, thick walls, soundproofing insulation between floors, and heat recovery ventilation, we won’t need a lot of additional heat. Plans call for an electric fireplace in the living room and a Nuheat mat under the tiles in the bathroom so baseboards in the basement might not be too bad. But then we got a flyer about rebates on heat pumps, i did some research online, and we might change our plans a bit. The problem with baseboard heaters is that they take up wall space and are a pretty inefficient way to heat a space. I have never been a huge fan. We have two options with heat pumps: just do the suite on a small heat pump, or replace our furnace and do the whole house. Heat pumps can have multiple zones and can connect to existing duct work and that would let us reduce our carbon footprint even more. Some of the cost is offset by grants offered by BC Hydro, a matching grant from the City of Vancouver and the Heritage Energy Retrofit grant which is partially calculated based on your GHG reduction over the next decade. As a bonus, it would reduce the space we need for our mechanical room and giving us access to cooling in the summer which would be nice.
Creep 2: Exterior insulation: This has been in the back of my mind for awhile for the original walls. The west wall is going to be half R22 new build but the living room currently has no insulation. We are thinking about blowing some in before we re-shingle but even then we are going to be lucky to have R7 in there and it will settle eventually. To augment this we could put a layer of Rockwool Comfortboard 80 on the outside. It comes in various thicknesses and R-values and adds a layer of fire protection which is nice. It will also create a thermal break and improve the overall insulation. The challenge is that the R-5 is 1.25″ thick and if you add space for an airgap and furring strips to attach the siding, it could mean that we have to rebuild our window sills. The payoff is less energy use, a warmer house in the winter, and a cooler house in the summer. In theory this is something we could handle on our own which reduces the cost and it would increase our retrofit grant. Only challenge is that we have to fork out the money first.
Cool Photos (Literally)
We haven’t gotten our full energy audit yet, but we have received the infrared photos which were pretty eye opening.
Front wall with no insulation. You can see that the studs are warmer than the gaps 
Bedroom wall that i insulated when we moved in. Notice here that the studs are the coldest part of the wall. 
The west wall with our single pane stained glass window 
Notice the cold air absolutely pouring in over the offspring’s bed 
More cold air 
The north wall is insulated a bit by our library.
The exterior insulation would reduce the thermal bridge on the studs and allow us to add a bit of insulation to the top ends of the house without opening up the walls. I am going to get busy with caulking various spots too before our next audit.
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