April 10th: The green light on permit

Well, the day we've been waiting for for the past few months finally arrived this week: we obtained our permits. After 82 days, the City of Vancouver finally granted our approvals. They also granted us the pleasure of upgrading their sewer line and water line, for the low, low cost of $13,500! Lucky us!!!

BUT, at least we're under way. So, what's now happened?

Well, I've started into the demolition in a serious way, and have removed most of the lower stucco as well as some of the upper stucco (to expose, smurf blue cedar planks on the lower level, and matching cedar shingles on the upper level). I've also removed the carpets (three layers!!!), the faux-wood paneling, and a few other odds and ends. I've managed to get rid of some things on craigslist, and have managed to fill up a yard's worth of garbage already.

General demolition in the downstairs

The ever-popular-on-Craigslist faux-wood panels

A shot of the chaos that is beginning to emerge (from a partially torn down deck)

Fortis (the gas company) cut the gas line the other day, and I've now turned off the water as well. We've got a power pole for electricity in place, though we haven't managed to get that hooked up (apparently it will take several weeks). I've got hazmat removal slated for next week, and I'll be using Embers (a social enterprise that trains workers) to assist me with some of the other demolition work on the interior. Beginning this weekend I plan to start with scaffolding for removal of stucco and cedar on the upper level.

Outside of that, I'm beginning to try to finalize various decisions, including:

1) Windows: After a lot of evaluation, I think we're landing on triple glazed low-E, argon-filled fiberglass windows from Cascadia. We opted for these for a bunch of reasons including:
- Fiberglass is more environmentally bening from a toxic perspective than PVC (which is nasty stuff)
- Fiberglass does not offgas VOCs unlike PVC
- Fiberglass is more dimensionally stable than PVC (it expands at the same rate as the glass units, versus PVC which is prone to expand roughly 7 times that of gas)
- Fiberglass is stronger than PVC which means you can have thinner frames
- Fiberglass can be painted in the future.
While it is more expensive, and does have a mechanical joint, the warranty is industry standard (20 years...versus lifetime for many PVC windows). The units themselves are really nice, with great hardware. We opted for casement windows (weren't sold on the tilt-and-turn) and fixed windows (definitely the way to go - cheaper, and thermally more efficient). In the end, the U values ranged from 0.17 (fixed), to 0.22 (casement), which is pretty sweet. What is also worth noting is that for many of the windows, the upgrade to triple glaze was peanuts ($23 in one case!) with the notable exception being tempered glass. All in all, the windows were a bit of a luxury item in the whole build, but I think are something we'll be really happy about in the long term.

2) Wall assembly: Also something that has been under debate for a really long time. I think we're settling upon the following:
OUTSIDE - Rock dash stucco (or cedar) - Lath - 3/4" Rainscreen (air gap) - 3" Roxul Comfortboard IS (rigid mineral rock wool) - Tyvek house wrap (taped to create decent air barrier) - Plywood - Roxul Comfortbatt (batt mineral rock wool) - Drywall (air tight) - Paint - INSIDE
This will create an upper wall with a nominal R-value of 26, and a lower wall with a nominal R-value of 34. When you combine in the windows and some thermal bridging, you achieve a rough effective R-value of around 27, which is pretty good, when you consider that the "green" BC building code only requires a nominal R-14 wall. If combined with the same amount of double glazed windows as we have, and standard fiberglass insulation, it would give you a rough effective R-value of under 17. Moreover, until 2008, the code required nominal R-14 (making most homes less than R-12 effective), and many older homes (like ours) have less than R-7 insulation (probably about R-3 effective). To put that into perspective, even my camping Thermarest is R-4!

3) Hazmat removal: A small note on that, which is that in the end, I opted to have the vermiculite removed. Unfortunately, even though it is non-containing, they still have to treat it as though it were containing...a $5K cost. Because there's not an easy (read cheap) way of 100% confirming that it is NOT containing, I'm opting to do the removal and be done with it. In its place, I'll blow in cellulose (recycled paper), though I still need to think about creating an air barrier in the attic. At least with the cellulose, it means we've got a safe attic that can be used for storage if need be. With the vermiculite removal, it means that I'll be removing: the vermiculite in the attic, the linoleum in the kitchen and bathroom, the ducting tape on the venting, and the breeching cement on the chimney. Total cost will be about $7500 + the costs of the rest of the demolition. I'm guessing in the end that total demolition costs will run me about $10,000.

4) I've decided I'm also going to have to eat up the costs of new cedar for the front and back. It's fairly pricey - about $2.30/sq.ft. for FSC certified cedar planks, and about $7/sq.ft. for install, so nearly $10/sq.ft. total, but the reclaimed stuff (my smurf blue siding!) is just too dead...it's beaten up, cracked, nailed, and covered in lead paint and I just don't think it's worth the effort to reclaim (as much as I'd love to). Here's where green runs out of energy.

I'll end this here for now, but I'll start posting more updates from here (promise!) and regular pictures of progress as it comes along. The aim is to complete demolition in the next 10 days, then lift prep, and then, hopefully in early May, we'll do the lift! Exciting.