Footings and walls

We had a lot of conversation with our Structural engineer and our Geotechnical engineer about the requirements for the footings and the rear wall backing into the bank of the hillside.  This foundation will never go anywhere! there is a shocking amount of steel and concrete work above and beyond our original estimates.  Walls were poured on Thursday August 6, foundation coating will be done across the weekend.

Site preparation, road and retaining walls

This has been a long and expensive excavation, we have move over 500 truck loads of material from the site, built a new road and retaining wall with over 130 concrete lock blocks to support the building envelope.  The building envelope grade was lowered 3 ft and the garage area was dropped an additional 3 ft to accommodate a more gentle transition from the driveway to the garage.

Spring Run-Off

This particular area of Lake Country has a very deep layer of compacted glacial till clay.  The clay layer starts about 7 ft down from the top of the soil ans appears to maintain that depth throughout the property.  The clay layer eliminates the potential for any water to seep any further than 7 ft down into the soil thus anything that is not taken up by the trees oozes down to the bottom towards the lake.  The issue is widespread and is commonly acknowledged by the neighbouring properties.  Horizon Geotechnical has made recommendations and we are currently researching costs and best practices.

Wildfire

Clearing of the wildfire hazards on the upper slope was completed mid March.

Development Permits and Building Permits

Submission for the Building Permit required many of the standard items such as: Home Owners Protection Office (HPO) registration, New Home Warranty, Geo-tech report, Building plans, and engineers report for structural engineering.  This specific lot also required a number of development permits including: Green House Gas Permit, Environmental Monitoring report, Hillside Development permit, Natural Environment permit and Wildfire Permit.  Application of these permits was completed December 19, 2014.  The District of Lake Country indicated we would receive the Permit some time late March or early April.