The DIY House Build - Intro

In this series of blog posts I’ll be walking you through the process we went through to build our own house with no construction experience. These posts will mainly focus on everything outside the studio. For more info on the studio build, check out the video series on my YouTube channel.

The design of the studio and need to build a custom home started many years ago but the house build ultimately started when we purchased a lot in the small town of Midway, BC. While I lived most of my life in Calgary, my husband and I had spent some time living with family in this area during the pandemic. Considering the warmer weather, affordable land, and closeness to family, we decided to move here permanently.

While this is a fairly rural area with the closest large city being a 2 hour drive, our lot is located in town and had all utilities already set up. Water and sewage lines had been extended to the property just as we purchased it due to do a house built on the neighboring property. Our property does have natural gas but we chose to go fully electric since we weren’t planning to have a furnace anyways and hiring a gasfitter just for a cooktop and water heater would be a significant expense.

The dimensions of the studio had already been determined so designing the house was mainly a matter of working around that and the space available on the lot. The studio needed to be on the ground floor (to be directly on concrete) ideally without anything above, we needed a 2 car garage (half for parking, half for workshop), and then a small living space with a single bedroom and bathroom. Wanting to have as much yard space as possible for gardening and for our dogs, we ended up with only a single layout that worked. We’ve gotten many complements on the design of our house and I wish I could take credit but it was very much a utilitarian approach. If we’d’ve had a larger property, the main thing I’d want to change is having a guest bedroom and potentially second bathroom in case ours ever ends up out of commission. Ultimately we had a drafted put together the building plans but it was simply a matter of copying the plans I had already drawn out.

In an effort to cut costs, manage the project closely, and due to a lack of contractors willing to work in this area, this was an owner builder project. That means I was the general contractor and was hiring subcontractors for everything we didn’t do ourselves. As an owner builder I’m allowed to hire subcontractors to carry out all of the work although there are rules regarding how much of the project a single contractor is able to perform (if they did too substantial of a portion of the work they’d be considered the general contractor and builder).

The province has strict rules on all new construction where you either need to be a certified builder or it must be an approved owner builder project. One of the differences is that a home built by a builder comes with a 10 year warranty whereas ours does not if we were to sell it to someone else. We are also legally required to disclose that it was an owner builder project to future buyers and we’re not allow to sell or rent out this property for the first year since completion.

In order to get permission to start an owner builder project (which is needed to subsequently apply for a building permit) I had to take an exam proving I was qualified to manage this project. Preparing for this exam mainly involved studying the BC building code, the laws surrounding owner builder projects (Homeowner Protection Act), and other construction management related aspects such as WorkSafe BC rules, jobsite safety, building permits, and inspections.

Unfortunately the “study guide” provided by the government is effectively useless. It simply states things like “floor framing best practices, sequencing, and materials” with no further explanation of the knowledge expected and what will be tested. Most of the material ties back to the building code but much of it does not. It’s somewhat nonsensical for them to expect an owner builder to know details like the number of nails required for different framing members as an owner builder will not necessarily be doing any framing themselves and could hire contractors to perform all of the work. The owner builder should only be required to know the laws and aspects relating to construction management since at the end of the day their only responsibility is to be the general contractor. The exam also forces you to learn many aspects which may not be relevant to your project such as regulations relating to gasfitting (like how high your gas meter needs to be off the ground…) and chimneys.

Thankfully Marko Juras has put together study materials based on gathering data from people who have taken the exam over the past 9 years. There’s no way I would’ve been able to pass the exam without his help. It seems that the whole owner builder process implemented by the BC government is only in place to deter people from being able to build their own home. Every year there are fewer and fewer owner builder authorizations despite the increasing population and housing crisis. The government has not shared any data showing the owner builder exam process being beneficial. Without the exam, projects would still need to be build up to code and pass inspections.

In order to apply for a building permit we had to ensure our house would meet the energy efficiency requirements set out by the province. This was done through an energy advisor who ran the necessary simulations and prepared the necessary reports. The government recently introduced what is called the Energy Step Code. This has 5 “steps” which a building will fall into based on how efficient it is. The lower the step, the worse the efficiency. The step code looks at factors such as the insulation in the walls was well as doors and windows, the airtightness of the home, the climate, and how things like sunlight will affect the home based on the size and orientation of windows. It also considers the HVAC system, water heater, and efficiency of appliances in the home. Most construction done in recent years would fall into step 2. When we started our construction process the law just started requiring new construction to be step 3. Eventually all new construction will need to be step 5 which is “net zero” and similar to the passive house standards where you can theoretically heat an entire house with nothing but a hair dryer.

The step code has performative targets rather than being prescriptive. In other words, it looks at the performance of the house as a whole and determines things such as required R value for each wall based on the simulation rather than requiring all walls to have a certain R value as building codes traditionally have done. Our plans had no issue passing the step 3 requirements. During the build process, we were required to add extra insulation for reasons relating to firestopping based on the building inspector’s interpretation of the code and we found certain spots where we could easily add more insulation so I decided to have our energy advisor revise their model and it ended up getting us to step 4. Achieving step 4 allowed us to get a much greater rebate from Fortis, our electricity provider.

It ended up taking us about a year to prepare everything and start breaking ground. This biggest hurdles were getting through the owner builder process, finding a bank willing to work with us on a construction mortgage and going through their process, getting construction insurance, and finding contractors and a construction company able to handle foundation and framing, all the while learning how to build a house and preparing for the mountain of work ahead.

In the next post we’ll start at the foundation and get through to drywall.