Living life in Beijingcity

NOTE: I WROTE THIS BACK IN EARLY JANUARY, BUT JUST POSTED IT NOW (GOT LOST IN NEAR PUBLICATION LAND)

Somewhat out of the blue, I got pulled into a 4 day, half-way-round-the-world, carbon-intensive journey to Beijing and back. Departed last Monday night, and returned on Friday morning, meaning I arrived in Beijing on Wednesday morning (no January 3rd, 2012 for me), and left Friday evening, but arrived Friday morning (via my Delorian-cum-Airbus time travel machine!).

Alexis's quick conclusions about Beijing:
1) People in Beijing love to smoke. They smoke outside, inside, everywhere. Ergo everywhere stinks of smoke. Bleh.
2) For "some reason", I kept getting calls every evening around 9pm in Mandarin. While I tried to explain to the woman (yes, it was always a woman) on the other end that I didn't speak Chinese, she kept talking to me. Eventually I gave up on the phone call. I later figured out (via business cards put in my door) and conversations with others that in fact these were "massage" offers. Thrilling. And at a supposed 5-star hotel!
3) The taxi drivers in Beijing are insane. I will admit that I'm a pretty aggressive driver, but these guys (and gals) made me look like a doddering slowpoke. I had one trip through the utterly traffic ridden city doing about 80km/hr with about 6 feet in front of us, 6 feet behind us and cars all around, while changing directions without signalling. It was sort of like doing a high speed parallel parking exercise with no signalling and squealing brakes. It made me ill. And there were not seatbelts. So I eventually looked sideways and accepted that I was in god's hands. Oh - and thank god for cell phones because they have no idea of what's located where in the city (perhaps not surprising when the city keeps growing at the current rate...I suppose I feel for taxi drivers in Calgary).
4) Because of #3, pedestrians are a brave, brave lot in Beijing. Traffic signals for pedestrians are somewhat meaningless because cars rule the city. With a green light for walking, it means "LOOK OUT FOR CARS" just as much as a red light. Beware.
5) Starbucks and KFC have completely taken over the Chinese. And while we in North America seem to really like our Subway restaurants, it would appear that the Colonel's secret recipe has addicted the entire population of China - they're quire ubiquitous. Starbucks, on the other hand, while not quite some well established, has managed to plunk a capitalistic US emblem right smack dab at the base of Tienanmen Square. Coffee tasted the same (a bit burnt) and costed the same (too expensive)...but at least they had free internet!
6) People in Beijing don't seem to understand the concept of thin ice (or are braver than we Canadians are). Or possibly wear drysuits beneath their regular clothing. What about "open water", "holes", "some ice" and "people walking on it" doesn't go together? It was like watching people on the Rideau Canal in early November. Could have been exciting if I'd stuck around. I was also wondering about the holes that were already in the ice...hmm...?
7) The subway system. Gotta give 'em credit - it's pretty great. It was cheap (about $0.30 each way), efficient, easy to understand, follow...and it even had lots of arrows pointing the way to get onto the subway, off of the subway, up the stairs, down the stairs, etc. Lots of guidance for a population that last time guided onto public transit using elbows and fingernails. Nevertheless, it worked smooth as a baby's bottom and is pretty impressive.
8) Harbin - the ice capital of the world. Who knew it was a giant tourism destination for people all over the world!? Not me. I suspect not most people. But they did have a 60 foot high ice sculpture and lots of fireworks.
9) Lastly, I have come to realize that while North Americans (and Europeans) largely seem to watch: Basketball, football (both kinds), tennis, hockey, nascar (?@*#*!?), and the odd other thing (Olympics, Tour de France, etc.), the Chinese pick up every other sport in the world. Regularly televised ping pong, badminton, diving, hammer throw, and you-name-it seems to be on the tube all the time. CCTV is quite the TV station.

So - voila, some memoirs of China for all to enjoy.

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.

Oh so close...April construction here we come

So, as promised, the City of Vancouver did indeed get back to me this week to indicate that I need to get my tree protection up before they will issue my building/development permits (yes, nice if they would have told me this before). Communication is not their fortay.

So - we're slated to get the tree protection stuff up on either Monday or Tuesday, and have the inspector come on Tuesday/Wednesday at which point, it should go back to the City for approval. At that point, I'll need to go in, and pay my fees and we're off to the "races".

First up will be demolition and decontamination. I've opted in the end to do a pretty extensive remediation with the vermiculite being removed (which sucks because it's non containing but they treat it as though it were), as well as the asbestos tile, ducting tape, and breaching cement. The demolition will include the entire inside, and for better or worse, I'm opting to do the entire exterior myself (should be interesting - especially for the higher siding...methinks scaffolding rental will be in my near future).

I should be starting to post more regularly now...the decisions are going to start coming fast and furious. Wish us luck!

My delinquent update

For those of you who have been waiting with bated breath wondering "when's the next post going to be?!", I'm back in the blogosphere with not a TON to report on.

We formally submitted our plans to the City of Vancouver on January 19th and were told that we should expect approval roughly 6-8 weeks from that date. Now, some 10 weeks later, we can safely say that the City of Vancouver doesn't really care about other people's time. Hopefully there will be approval at some point soon, but it all remains to be seen.

In the interim, we've been getting quotes, adjusting drawings, and generally getting ready to proceed once we get the green light.

The bad news over the past few months:
- Costs have escalated (shocking!). This has been mainly due to a few decisions such as opting for fiberglass windows over PVC (no offgassing, more structurally stable, etc.), as well as having the vermiculite in the roof removed, and having to increase some of the costs for project management/site super work. We're coming in around $204/sq.ft. right now, but I'm going to be doing my darndest to lower that number back down to $200.
- I've missed out on the federal energy rebate program which kind of sucks (~$5000 in lost rebates)
- People keep saying the housing market is going to implode

The good news over the past few months:
- I can still make the BC energy rebate program (~$4500)
- Ikea keeps offering deals so we'll get a chunk of money back from the kitchen/bathroom events when they next come up (~$2000)
- The housing market hasn't imploded.
- Interest rates look stable for the coming while (good given our variable rate)
- I've started to move vegetation from the front to the back of the house in preparation for the permit.
- I've realized that triple glazings don't actually cost that much more (though tempered glass is a different story).

So - that's all for now. As soon as I get the permit, I'll be trying to blog more on here, record pictures and keep this story rolling along.

Cedar siding, solar and general status

So a few updates on life in the house-maelstrom:

1) Cedar Siding: After mulling over whether to remove, strip the paint, refinish and stain the existing siding, I'm thinking I'm instead going to source out some recycled cedar siding instead. It should save me a considerable amount of time and effort. However, I'm still not sure on how much effort will be required even with recycled siding. It will certainly have more of a "weathered" patina and look unless we re-work it. It's all just a question of time and money...

2) Submission to City: We're pretty much set to go with all of our drawings at this point. We have a meeting with the architects tomorrow and so hopefully should finalize when we will submit to the City. Fingers crossed!

3) Windows: I'm still mulling over the pros and cons of vinyl vs. fiberglass. Seems like the former is cheaper with pretty comparable thermal performance. The big downsides of vinyl are that it's nastier to manufacture (worse for the environment - though improvements have been made in recent years), and that it undergoes more thermal contraction/expansion than fiberglass (which probably isn't as big an issue in Vancouver). Fiberglass can also be painted (whereas vinyl can't). The difference is about 25% more for the fiberglass (arguably there are some other aspects to the windows like locking points, warranties, etc.) , so I'm not sure I'll be able to justify it in the end. Also, for some mysterious reason, paint appears to cost a lot (25% upcharge!). Crazy.

4) Non-CFC/HCFC Styrofoam. Apparently there are a bunch of non-ozone depleting foam options now available. Seems like Dow and Dupont do hear environmentalists after all! Good news for the sub-slab insulation.

5) Kitchen planning: With my parents about to come out, we're in kitchen planning mode. Big decisions include: (A) whether to do just lower cabinets or do upper and lower cabinets, and (B) whether to buy some of our appliances from Ikea or not (there's a good incentive to do so). I'm still mulling over going to an induction range (~$1000), along with a gas oven. The induction system has a lot of pros to it (more energy efficient, safer, faster, etc.)...but would probably require an upgrade to a 200amp service (which will add another $2-$3K to the budget). However, I might be forced into the latter anyhow, which would make it a moot point. Decisions, decisions...

6) Sketchup: Been mucking around with Sketchup a bunch lately to try to model our house (our architects aren't doing a 3D model for us because we've apparently used up too much of their time). It's actually pretty easy to use, but does have a few weird interface issues and I'm struggling to make a few things work. I kind of wish it had a few more manoeuvring/navigating buttons because I find the ones they have a bit limiting. However, at least I now have a pretty good sense of what it will look like in 3D.

Lastly, another milestone - liquidated one of our kayaks today (the green Nimbus Telkwa Sport). One down, one to go. But at least we've got another chunk of $ in our pockets.

Building for the big one

Lately Kris and I have had the pleasure of hanging out more with one of her friends from her old job in New West at Urban Academy, Allison, and her partner Osmar (or just "Oz" as people call him). In addition to being lovely people, they're in the process of doing a lot of renovations to their own place. Oz is actually a structural engineer who is doing his PhD examining wall assemblies under earthquake scenarios and helping to inform how buildings "should" be built to make them not just safe (i.e., not fall down), but actually functional (i.e., be usable after the quake and not have to be torn down). I then happened to pick up a copy of Outside Magazine that had an article all about what the big one would look like here in the Pacific Northwest (with an estimated damage cost of over $30 billion!). So...it's got my mind thinking about the earthquake readiness of our place...

The good news: 
1) We'll be building re-inforced concrete foundations and adding shearwalls to improve the structure considerably over what is there now.
2) We're cladding with stucco and it's a wood-framed house, both of which have some levels of quake-resistance.
3) We're located on decent soils and outside of a tsunami zone
4) We can also build in some other safety features like an easily accessible gas valve shut-off.
5) Vancouver is not as prone to big earthquakes as many other parts of the west coast and when the big one (a 9.0+ megathrust earthquake) does happen, it's likely to occur off the west coast of Vancouver Island. Accordingly, the effective size here will be closer to 8.5-8.7 (from what I'm told...) which is a lot less worse than a 9.0+! That said, it would still be massively destructive.
6) We're removing the chimney which is one big hazard in a quake
7) We've generally got the opportunity to build in as much earthquake proofing as we can.

The bad news:
1) Nothing really survives a 9.0+ earthquake without major damage.
2) We've got overhead electrical wires that can't be buried that will be live and come down in a bad scenario.
3) We're removing a whole bunch of walls in the front and back creating a so-called "soft story" structure (big openings on the bottom with house above) - these are a lot more vulnerable in an earthquake.
4) We can't afford to put in all of the earthquake proofing as one might like (don't worry Mom...we'll make sure it's safe).

Found a few neat sites including this one which we'll use as we go forward:
http://quake.abag.ca.gov/wp-content/documents/Plan-Set-A.pdf

And yes, Mom, we're putting together an earthquake kit.

New Year, New House?

Well - my first post of 2012 - and hopefully by the time January 1, 2013 rolls around, we'll be all set in our new place and I can reflect upon this whole thing.

The brief update on things: we're basically set with our designs, but there are a few little things that I'd like to modify before we submit them to the City. With Bruce on holiday and Ian not back in the office until Tuesday, it may be another week before we actually get things to the City, but we'll see.

In other news - here are some things I've learned since I last posted:
1) My foundation walls are too low. I had always kind of assumed that the foundation walls were buried behind the cladding, but no, in fact the cladding DOES go to the base of the foundations...which in turn are basically at ground level! Yikes! So, another $$ rolls along and means that we'll need to build up the foundations by at least 6-8" (you're supposed to have at least 8" of your foundation exposed where it meets the ground in order for it to breathe and keep things from your cladding - e.g., termites, moisture, etc.). Brett tells me that it will be about $1500 to extend the foundations to the necessary height...not the worst expense, but also the budget of one of our bathrooms!

2) My ceiling joists are actually smaller (in all directions) than I had originally assumed. They're 7" x 1.5" (I had been assuming 8"x10". Don't think there will be issues with that, but will need to double check. Found a kind of neat thing as well when I dug around under the ceiling tiles the other day (see pic - 1928 Steven Toth = previous owner and I'm assuming his birthdate). Definitely some history to the house!

Oh Steven...why did you not cross your "t"?

3) I "think" we'll actually have a mountain view from the top level when all is said and done (at least in the winter). That's good news - mainly because I really like looking at the mountains - but also because it increases the value of the house.

4) There are lots of options out there in terms of toilets (the latest thing I've been looking at). At this point, I think the leaders are the Toto Aquia II and the Kohler Persuade (pictured). In looking at the various reviews out there, some people seem to complain about cleaning "skid marks" from the dual flush/low-flow toilets...which frankly we're kind of used to anyhow.

Toto Aquia II

Kohler Persuade

5) The latest thing in building wrap seems to be paint-on wraps. I'd been guided to this RGuard CAT5 product by a friend, and so I've been doing more digging on paint-on-WRBs (or Water-Resistant Barriers) and it would seem that DuPont now has a comparable product - "paint-on Tyvek" or Tyvek Fluid Applied WB as they call it. Still not sure if I trust it long term, but the idea of it is very appealing.