Owner Builder

Once the approvals were in, the excavators were booked and sent the approved plot plan for excavation and digging of the basement. This was interesting, since they actually showed up and started doing the work before we even had a contract! While that was nice, it was a bit disconcerting to go out to the site and see a backhoe digging out the basement without knowing he was going to show up.

So, that part went well, and I booked the cribbers right away. I used the same guys for cribbing as I did for the foundation walls… What a fiasco these guys were!

The Devon project had a mistake right from the start, before I even had approvals. The drawings from the architect didn’t comply with the town’s lot coverage regulations.

In dealing with the mistake that was on the plans, measuring and knowing lot coverage is the architect’s responsibility. Before you do a drawing that is to be used for approvals, the architect is required to have a copy of the plot drawing (also called a plot plan). So, of course the architect had this. It is the architect’s job to make certain that the initial plans given by the designer (in the owner-builder case, that’s usually you) complies with any site regulations in regards to size, height, and so-forth. With the Devon home, he didn’t. So what did I do?

I had him go back and redo the drawings according to my instructions to make it smaller.

And he had the audacity to send me a bill for correcting his own mistake. He was never paid that extra bit. However, we were unable to recover the extra cost the surveyers charged us for having to approve the plans twice.

This kind of error was something that I’d never come across before. I learned a lot about that step in the due diligence process. And hopefully somebody else will learn from this, too.

I got really tired of not finding any information directed to the Canadian owner-builder, and therefore have decided to start this site. I’ve worked professionally as a home building contractor for a small custom builder in Edmonton, Alberta, and have built a couple of homes through that as well as doing many home renovation projects professionally.

It’s really hard to find the right information geared to Canadian regulations and our actual environment, particularly geared to how varied the weather actually is up here. And we do have to allow for that in our home building! I’ve lived and worked in the USA, and found that the way a lot of the homes were built there, they wouldn’t stand up to our Canadian environmental stresses. It ’s just simply a matter of what works and what doesn’t.

So, with all of this in mind, I set up this blog to let people help each other and give advice, make comments, and generally help one another to learn about the owner-builder process and help each other in learning to build our own houses!

With the housing market being as crazy at it has been in Canada, and especially Alberta, the last couple of years, there is no better alternative, if you have the time, than building your own home. Here’s a place to start! Ask questions, answer questions, and post your projects (brag) showing people what you’ve done and where you’re at in your own house building project.

And hey, why not post major renovations, too? This is relevant to the entire home building process.