Like a circus trainer guiding an elephant, a truck pulled up in front of our house yesterday with a massive excavator in tow. A crowd formed across the street with passerby’s stopping to watch as the excavator was backed off the trailer, guided up our driveway and set loose on the house.

The excavator stood almost as tall as the house itself, but its scale remained in stark contrast to its delicate operation. I thought for sure it would function in a completely unsophisticated manner… like a child smashing through a sandcastle. However, it was far more elegant and the operator had far more control over it than I ever expected. He tore through the roof in a matter of seconds, but then delicately dismantled a wall brick by brick. He was also slow and methodical, ensuring no damage was done to the neighboring houses.

The demolition was accomplished by only 2 guys—one in the excavator, and the other on foot. The gentleman on the ground sorted the debris into various piles (wood, stone/brick, and metal) while the excavator knocked down walls and compressed the wood into the basement. At first I didn’t understand why he was compressing everything into the basement, but it’s actually quite obvious in retrospect. He piled all of the wood into the void, and eventually built himself a platform to drive on. I thought for sure the mammoth machine would collapse into the hole, but he drove into the living room without hesitation. The bricks and stone were be separated out and eventually hauled away, after which the wood was removed and dropped in the bin. So simple, yet so effective.

Most of the house went down yesterday, the rest came down today, and we’ll start excavating for the new foundation tomorrow. If all goes according to plan, we’ll be forming the footings on Thursday and pouring concrete on Friday.

Of course, I’ve been capturing photos via the webcam and have cut together a quick video of yesterdays events.

It took twenty two days longer than we anticipated, but the City of Toronto has finally issued us our building and demolition permits. The house has been sitting vacant for more than a month now, but she’s finally coming down on Monday.

Altius handled the submission of the various applications, which included the construction, engineering, electrical, and geotechnical drawings. However, ten days after our initial application we received word that our permits were temporarily refused until we satisfied the following 3 conditions:

1. A report from a Geotechnical Engineer outlining the methods we’d need to utilize to prevent the collapse of soil and ensure the neighboring foundations would be free of damage during the excavation. Or a signed letter from each of adjacent neighbor stating we had permission to excavate into their property. We opted for the neighbors letter.
2. Certified specifications for the proposed ICF systems.
3. On-site general review by a professional engineer for the constructions / installations of the prefabricated and/or any proprietary products proposed, the possible special foundation/footing design in the case of the angle of repose of the neighboring footing(s) is encroached, and any shoring design deemed necessary.

1. Owner’s Letter of Undertaking & General Review Commitment Certificates.

   I won’t go into detail for each, but these conditions were relatively straightforward to satisfy and we faxed back the requested documents in less than 48 hours. However it took another twenty days to receive final approval, which I personally think is entirely unacceptable. I’m sure the City is busy and all, but it shouldn’t take that long for someone to review 4 faxed documents. I suppose I should be happy that we didn’t get denied again… That clearly would have tacked another month of waiting onto the process. Regardless, we finally have our permits and we’re all ready to go. I suspect things are going to get a little crazy from this point on.

   This project has been nothing but fantasy up until this point, so it’s a little hard to believe that come Monday, there’ll be nothing but a big hole at 360 Winnett.

   Game on… there’s no turning back now.

   ]]> http://360winnett.com/2008/08/23/permission-granted/feed/ 0 http://360winnett.com/2008/07/22/movin-on-up/ http://360winnett.com/2008/07/22/movin-on-up/#comments Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:23:09 +0000 jeremybell http://www.360winnett.com/?p=145 Continue reading →]]>

   Lets just cut to the chase here, shall we? I’m not fan of moving. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say I hate it. I know I’ve spoken about wanting more room, but deep down I suspect the real reason we’re building this house is so we won’t ever have to move again. I mean, once the house is complete, I can’t foresee a reason why we’d ever want to leave. Of course, we can’t exactly build it without first moving out, so we’ll have to endure this necessary evil one last time.

   At 8:30 am on Friday morning, 2 guys from Rent-a-Son arrived to help us pack. If you’re not familiar with the company, I’m sure the name is self explanatory (that, and they apparently don’t employ women). They were significantly cheaper than hiring actual ‘movers’, but I’d say the end result was just the same. The guys were polite, friendly and didn’t complain when I told them we needed to move a 300lbs TV. What more can I ask for? I suppose the only downside was that we needed to supply all of the packing materials… which was fine, although we really weren’t sure how much we needed, and as we quickly came to realize, boxes don’t come cheap. Of course, we could have hit up the LCBO for some used boxes, but that didn’t seem like a wise move, what with them being stacked on top of each other for the next 8 months.

   The best prices we could find were from a place appropriately named Packaging World. Now, I don’t know the guy’s name, but the gentleman who helped us was quite a character. If anything, he reminded me of Tom Smykowski, the disgruntled employee from Office Space. That said, he was very friendly, knowledgeable, and extremely passionate about packing. His recommendations also turned out to be spot on (I think we only had 2 extra boxes), which is hard to poke fun at.

   Most of our belongings will be held in storage until the construction is complete, however I wasn’t too enthused about renting a truck, packing everything into the truck, driving to the storage facility, unpacking the truck… and then repeating the process again in 8 months. So to lessen the pain a little, we had the storage container brought to us.

   Giant Storage (also appropriately named, hmm…) dropped off a 20’ container, which apparently holds “the contents of a 1600-1800 sq ft, 3 bedroom home with no major appliances.” When it arrived, I was convinced we wouldn’t actually fill it. I mean, come on, it barely fit in our driveway. However, it appears we have a lot of junk or oversized furniture, because our stuff barely fit inside.

   The containers are sturdy, ventilated, and stored at a secured storage facility, so everything should survive the 8 month vacation while the house is being built. Should we need something, the facility is nearby, and we’ll have access to the container. I’m not expecting we’ll actually need to get into it, but it’s comforting to know our stuff isn’t entirely out of reach.

   So now the house sits empty, patiently awaiting it’s fate. I must admit, saying goodbye was a little saddening… but of course, I cheered up in my own special way:

   ]]> http://360winnett.com/2008/07/22/movin-on-up/feed/ 10