We've mentioned in this blog, multiple times now, that we're building a house in Port Alberni, Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The Alberni Valley is a beautiful place and we'll be right in the centre of it, surrounded by mountains and linked by a 25 mile fjord to the Pacific Ocean.
It's been over a year now since we purchased our building lot here, in November 2020. Since then, we've been trying, valiantly, to get this build going. It's been a struggle. The last time we built a house (1987, in Ontario) it took us only eight months, from a back of the napkin design at Easter to move-in at Christmas. That house was a custom-built post and beam home, around 2400 sq ft. Now, we're trying to build a home less than half that size and it's going to take three times as long. The reasons are many. Covid played a role as did labour shortages due to housing demand, huge cost spikes and supply chain issues. Location played a big part. Building in BC, in both a high seismic zone and a tsunami zone, meant there were many additional obstacles to overcome. We needed structural engineering review to deal with the seismic issues. We'd never heard of 'geotechnical' engineering before, but, soon learned that was a requirement as well, due to risk of landslide on our fairly steep lot and close proximity of a neighbour's rather large retaining wall. We also needed a new survey, usually around $800. The 'current' one was done in 1910 and unfortunately it ended up costing $12,000 because we had to survey, not just our lot, but the entire City block. The biggest reason for the delay though seemed to be that the company we had hired for design and material supply just didn't seem all that motivated to get it done. The design has changed very little from the first sketch, yet, it often took a couple of months to implement one revision. Then, we'd find it hadn't changed the way we'd asked and would have to keep repeating ourselves. We're not patient people and the wait has been excruciating.
However, I'm now thrilled to report that, at last, we have started! The excavator has been working for three days. Our 'geotech' engineer has had a look at the dig and decided that we will also be needing a large retaining wall to ensure we don't migrate down the hill. We thought that might be the case, but, it still means a very heavy expense that's not usually required. We could have bought an easy, flat, boring lot but we think the attributes of this lot are worth the extra expense. We have a fabulous 180 degree view of the Alberni Inlet, a triple-sized City lot with services, unopened road allowances on two sides, laneway access at the rear and a cul-de-sac at the front. We can easily walk to shops/restaurants yet still feel we are living in a private, rural location.
So, everything's in place now and fingers crossed, it will be a reasonably trouble-free, fast build.
🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞😍
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