Intel
Housing Design Library - City of Burnaby
The City of Burnaby has made available their Housing Design Library which includes 12 suggested design plans that can be licensed from the designer or Architect. The designs range from a single dwelling lane-way-house to more than 6 dwelling unit designs.
The website suggests that each of the full designs have already been determined to comply with the City zoning requirements, and one simply needs to confirm with engineering the site requirements, purchase the plans, apply for the building permit, and start building!
I am intrigued that the website states that applicants need to engage a CP (Certified Professional) for row housing, apartment style housing, and applications more than 3 storeys or more than 600 square meters. There is no indication that the City wishes applicants to follow the regular building permit process, which I would expect is still an option.
burnaby.ca
NBC 2025 Public Review - Overheating
Want to have your say on the new changes being contemplated for the 2025 National Building Code of Canada? Or, are you at least interested in what is being proposed? Well, you are in luck! The Canadian Board for Harmonized Construction Codes has opened a public review on the new provisions for "Overheating in new dwelling units (Parts 1, 6, and 9)", that propose adding a maximum indoor air temperature for all new dwelling units.
This follows the change in the 2024 British Columbia Building Code to add cooling requirements for at least one bedroom in every new dwelling unit in BC, in response to the Heat Dome we experienced in 2021 which resulted in 619 heat-related deaths.
The Public Review is open for comments until noon on February 24th, so if you have an opinion on this, make sure you let it be known!
cbhcc-cchcc.ca
Lore
Construction restarts on the Jeddah Tower
Does it seem odd to you, like it does to me, to place a spindly radio tower on the top of a building, just to claim a new height record? Despite this, at reportedly over 1000 m tall, even likely with an antenna, the Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia is impressively tall and will be the tallest structure in the world when completed. This is five times taller than the tallest building in Vancouver, and not quite twice as tall as the CN Tower in Toronto.
After a history of delays and stops and starts, the construction on the tower has started again on the 64th floor, with construction planned for 1 floor every 4 days and overall completion anticipated in 2028. However, with 250 odd floors left to go (depending on the height of the antenna), it seems there is opportunity for construction to be stopped again.
From a fire safety perspective, there are substantial challenges with a building of this height, and in my opinion our Building Code does not contain provisions for a building of half this height. The World Trade Centre twin towers were 413 and 411 m, and evacuation required well over four hours for people to descend the exit stairs during 9/11, which is just one challenge to consider. Some more recent innovations such as the use of elevators for evacuation, can be considered to resolve some of the height issues.
What do you think about buildings of these impressive (ridiculous?) heights? They are certainly a feat of Architecture and Engineering. Send me your thoughts.
dezeen.com
Wisdom
Shower Curtains
The BC Building Code Interpretation Committee has come out recently with many new interpretations that are quite useful. These interpretations can be found on the BOABC website.
When I first saw this interpretation on if curtains were allowed for an accessible shower, I was hoping the answer would be juicy with a lot of details, but the answer is a simple "Yes, with conditions". The very reasonable conditions are that the curtain must be installed in a way that does not obstruct the shower controls and allows the person with a disability to use the facilities.
Personally, I like it when the shower curtain extends the full extent of the shower opening, so that the curtain blocks the cold draft from the rest of the room while I have my hot shower! Please don't specify the minimum shower curtain to just fill the opening!
boabc.org
About
Thank you for reading today!
I hope your January has gone well and you are excited to dig into February! It looks like snow is going to arrive here in the Capital next week, which my kids will be excited about. I mean, who doesn't love a snow day? Well, perhaps us parents...
All the best, and see you on the next issue!
Noncompliant Brian