Hallelujah! The Building Permit has arrived ... just in time for next season!

After five months (less a week) of submissions and questions and re-submissions we now have our Building Permit from the City of Toronto.

 

Five months seems along time to get a permit for our rather modest undertaking, all things considered.  It's not as if we are building a whole house or building a swimming pool

Part of the dilemma is that the City staff who work on residential scale projects have very little experience evaluating green roofs, and tend to "throw the book " of regulations at it.  At various times I spoke with four different layers in the system, and while they are all very positive and helpful, only the manager seemed to truly understand what was going on.

They might have green roofs for condominiums well under control, but they do need more staff training on residential scale undertakings, if only to save time in the permitting process.

Part of the dilemma was that I did not understand the minute details needed on one key element, until very late in the process.

Key points going forward....

• Make sure your roof is designed for the load 2 - 3  kPa (40 - 60 psf) - depending on your planting aspirations - right from the get go.  254mm - 305mm joists at 406mm or 300mm centres.  The smaller sized 150mm or 200mm timber is just not strong enough, especially at the wider spacing.

• Be realistic about your horticultural aspirations, as the the depth of your growing medium is the limiting weight component when wetted.
  
  Sedums vs wild flowers and grasses vs a vegetable garden vs shrubs vs trees?
  
  1,200 kg/m3 is a good place to start for a light weight growing medium at "field capacity".

• Green roofs is "dead load" and you also need to include the self load of the roof, along with the snow load.

• Wind uplift is a key concern at City Hall - they don't want your installation blowing away and nor do you.  This was a very time consuming matter!
  
  I could not find a strictly Canadian solution for the complete calculations.
  
  You will need to use NBC 2010 (or better)  for the raw wind pressure information - q(1/50) and composite pressure - gust coefficients, etc
  
  It appears that the German uplift calculations, as documented in the engineering report prepared by Strodthoff & Behrens GmbH; “Assessment of positional security against wind uplift for a roof planting system that is permeable to wind”, report No. 1/21010/10.99 dated Nov. 25, 2009", are acceptable when an independent (engineering) consultant provides site specific results for your installation.
  
  Examples of these calculations can be found in a number of web sites, including the XeroFlor sites : www.xeroflor.com and www.xeroflorcanada.ca
  
  I am willing to pass on my Toronto contacts via off-line communication.

• Professional engineers who stamp the drawings for their own home are not immune from additional independent 3rd party analysis and reporting requirements.  My drawings had  three different stamps on parts of them, not counting the structural engineer from the original house.  Professional engineers stamps cost money and take time!

Part of our dilemma is that a building permit issued on 01 October is not useful in the current 2014 growing season.  The lead times for some of the required input "product" would put the installation into late November or even December.  

So we have flagged it for May in 2015 and will be stepping forward vigourously at that time.

Words to the  wise - If you want a (Toronto) Building Permit ready to go in May then get started in October the year before.

On ward and upward!

In response to your your call of .... I now submit....

As you can see from the date on this post ( 26th September) my ball has been over in the City Building Department court since July.  Almost 3 months.  And I have yet to win the match.

There have been several rounds of phone calls, rejections, questions, re calculations and re submissions - the most recent one was the fifth.  I have moved forward slowly and we are now addressing what is, I hope, one last and final "concern".

It's all about wind uplift.  And a "Canadian" procedure.

All my spare time has unearthed only one procedure to manage wind uplift and sedum mats, short of heading into the wind tunnel and generating yet another thesis. 

It is based on a report prepared by  WSG Engineering, Aachen, Germany. The WSG analytical report entitled “Assessment of positional security against wind uplift for a roof planting system that is permeable to wind” was issued in November, 1999.  I understand that this work was funded by XEROFLOR and it is based on some of their sedum mat products.

It acknowledges the porosity of the sedum mat and uses a moderating factor to conservatively calculate the actual uplift load.  Given my own reluctance to anchor the mats through my single membrane roof, I am relying on the weight of the mat to counteract any uplift.

Several examples of it application have been provided to the City, including one down on Elm St, Toronto. We even provided that name of the City official who has accepted the procedure on another local roof. 

To no avail.

I am obliged to engage yet another engineer just to sign-off on the wind uplift component of this project.

When will it ever end? 

 OTOH, I understand that XERO-FLOR Canada is currently in the NRC wind tunnel dealing with this explicit issue.  I look forward to seeing the report. 

I just hope I can get my own roof on before this winter hits and before the XERO-FLOR / NRC work hits the printers press.

At Last, Some Progress...

City of Toronto Eco-Roof 

Incentive Program Application : Part 2

Today we received a delightful letter from the manager of  City's Eco-Roof Incentive Program.

Our application for a grant has been approved (YIPPEE!) and subject to some fine print like - 

• get it done before mid-January, 2015,
•  substantially in conformance...,
•  signed off by the designer / installer, 
• have it measured, inspected and verified by the City, 

.....  and then they will send us a cheque for a gazillion dollars, but smaller than my (City) annual tax bill.

Good stuff!

Now we will turn our attention back to the Building Department where our application for a building permit is languishing in a slow queue needing  yet more calculations, verification and further "stamping".

I understand that there is a condominium (green roof) application ahead of me in the queue, that people are scurrying to get it approved and "permitted" before the fee goes up at the end of the month.

It also transpires that our Building Engineer at City Hall has never done a residential scale green roof application before.  Suffice to say, through gritted teeth, that he is being very cautious.

Ever onward, ever upward!!

City of Toronto Eco-Roof Incentive Program Application

City of Toronto Eco-Roof
Incentive Program Application

Another milestone completed today - I have completed the application form for the City's Eco-Roof Incentive Program.  

Click on the link (above) to start (dreaming about) your green roof.  Lots of good greening  information plus the on-line application form.

They provide a grant to residential home owners, as well as commercial and industrial property owners, to build green roofs.  It gets a bit complicated for new industrial and commercial roofs because I think they have to put on green roofs anyway, just to comply with the City's "encouraging" By-Laws.

The City would like to pay me $75 per sq m2 to put a green roof on my home, subject to some fine print like "The proposed green roof will satisfy the requirements of Toronto’s Green Roof Construction Standard. Note: Applicants are required to obtain a permit from the Chief Building Official prior to construction. A copy of this permit is required upon verification of the Eco-Roof." That is,  A Building Permit!

The documentary requirements for the Eco-Roof Incentive Program are similar to, but not as extensive as, the Building Permit Application. I just provided the same documents and drawings  as the BP application.  

You will need to provide a set of "pre-installation" photographs of your roof.  Here are a couple of ours.

You will need to provide a Maintenance Plan that will look after the installation through the first 5 years of stewardship. However, there are several templates or suggestions / guidelines floating around the WWW for you to consider.  The City does reserve the right to come and inspect it within 5 years of installation to ensure on-going performance and compliance.

Other than that the application  seems pretty straight forward.  I'm sure I can expect a CQ in the mail any day now ......

 If you have any questions about the program or related City "Green" initiatives,  I suggest you call Ann -Marie Baynton at 416-392-1848.

Sedum Mat - Close up!

Anne-Marie Baynton
Eco-Roof Coordinator
Environment and Energy Office
Phone: 416-392-1848
Fax: 416-338-0808
Email: abaynton@toronto.ca

Mailing address:
City Hall, 21st Floor, East Tower
100 Queen Street West
Toronto, ON, M5H 2N2

No News is Good News

No News is Good News ???

or

Wheels of Industry Turning Slowly

It has been three weeks since the City accepted my BP application.  

At the time of submission staff indicated that it might take 6-8 weeks to receive my Permit.  Evidently my application does not qualify for the Residential FASTRACK  process - at least the computerised screening process did not drop me into that queue.

I have been assigned a Zoning Examiner and a Building Engineer.  We have traded "Hi, how're getting on" emails within which they indicated that my application might get looked at last week (three) or this one (four).

The on-line Building Department Application Status system shows that the Zoning Review is Closed but the Code Review is "Not Started".

I wait with bated breath. Impatient, but bated.  Maybe the phone will ring this week .....

Update : 14 July 2014

The Zoning Review is completed and successful. 

I would have been more than a little surprise if this had failed as the home was designed for green roof and solar panels right from the get-go.  "All that" was part of the discussions and negotiations that went into the site-specific By-law that was promulgated for this particular development.

Ever Onward, Ever Upward!

The Building Permit Application #3

Applying for the Royal Building Permit.

Quite a bit of water has been flowing under the proverbial bridge since April.  So far I have put in three increasingly complex building permit (BP) applications, not counting the inaugural informal discussions. Each time,  I received slightly better but slightly different information from staff, and it took a good session with the manager of the examiners to (I hope, finally) determine what is acceptable.

The staff of the Building Department do not see too many BP applications for green roofs for SFD, and certainly not ones submitted by home owners.  The desk staff are very helpful, but you need to appreciate that your application is far from their run-of-the-mill work load.

So, the key points that were needed before the City would accept my application are shown below.  YMMV!

• Know how strong your roof is.
• Know your units : 1kPa = about 21 psf (20.885434273).  2 kPa  of snow or green roof weighs about 42 psf and that is fairly heavy.
• A layer of light-weight growing medium 25mm / 1" thick is calculated to be 0.3 kPa, just over 6 psf - at "field capacity for moisture". 
• Your growing medium loads will all be calculated at field capacity to allow for the moisture that is stored within the soil matrix.   It is the water left behind when the drainage layer has removed all naturally / gravitationally available storm or irrigation water.
• This is sometimes called the "wet density". About 1,200 Kg per cubic metre, approx, but does vary quite a bit by vendor.
• [Don't use soil / triple mix - way too heavy unless your roof is very substantial. ] 
• Roof structural loadings is but a numbers game when push comes to shove.
• The City of Toronto treats green roofs as "dead load". This will affect your calculations of loadings.
• Live load is when you walk on the roof to maintain the vegetation.
• Become well versed about "wind uplift".  There are several documents and resources on the www, but most of them are based on one study from WSP Engineering on Nov 25, 1999 and commissioned by Strodthoff & Behrens GmbH.  I understand this report was paid for  by XEROFLOR, and parts of it are available from their website.  Thank you XEROFLOR for making it publicly available.
• NRC Canada can provide some local wind uplift data.
• Ensure that all specifications and drawings are stamped by a professional engineer. Whether it is your hired engineers stamp or your own (engineers) stamp seems to make no difference.
• Home owners (in Toronto) can stamp their own designs, calculations and drawings so long as your are an Ontario P.Eng with a "stamp".  I think there might also be a limitation if you sell the home within a short period of time.
• It's a poor pun, but to paraphrase  the Ontario Gaming Commission - "Know Your Limits : Play Within Them".  Applies to home owner / engineer / designers, as well.
• If using hired design or engineering staff, they should have a BCIN (Building Code Identification Number) - signifying that the Province thinks the person, or their corporation, knows the Ontario Building Code "sufficiently".
  
• Put all your design information onto drawings - the City staff don't seem to like scoping reports or letters, unless they request them.
• Get all the drawings and specification documents stamped
• It is really, really handy to have quick access to a scanner so you can sign / scan / submit documents and forms. Most of the forms are legal sized  (8.5" by 14") paper.
• There are three obligatory City Forms to be filled.
•       Forestry (even if you don't touch any trees - its a sign-off), 
•       Designer Information, 
•       BP Application Form 
•        plus the Consultant Form if you use consultants / designers / engineers
• You will also need to submit a Green Roof Declaration and keep any eye out for Section 4-iii wherein you or your designer needs to substantiate any part of the installation that has growing medium thinner than 100 mm (4").
• Develop a Maintenance Plan as part of your submission.
• Submit all the application documents electronically on a DVD-RW. No other digital format is acceptable, although I think might be able do it on-line. I did it in-person because they are close to home, and I usually learn a lot through the chit-chat with staff.   
•      Merge all the "documents" into one pdf format file.
•      Merge all your "drawings" into one pdf format file
•      Keep the City forms as separate pdf's - they get sent in different directions.
•      If using old drawings, they need to be cleaned of all forms of prior approvals or notations.  Leave the engineers stamp, but remove everything else.
• All documents and drawings, etc, to be published in black and white - no colour.
• Leave your paper at home. They will send it home anyway! They even send you away with your DVD-RW in your pocket.

The BP application is treated as a "Re- Roofing" and the fee is calculated at $5.36 per sq m, (June 2014).

The BP Application turn-around is said to be in the 6-8 week range. 

That gives me plenty of time to apply for the Toronto ECO-Roof Incentive Program Grant.  All things going well, the City will provide a grant of $75 per sq m  which will help my cash flow substantially.  There is some fine print.  Read it at their web site.

So now we wait patiently, calculating quantities, getting quotations from vendors etc, watching the soccer ... patiently staring at my grubby D50 membrane.

Where we came from.

We acquired 20A Senlac in the winter of 2013.  The home was innovative, to the point of being unusual (in Toronto), high efficiency and environmentally sensitive.   

It had been built by Nexterra Green Homes from a Living Homes design by Ray Kappe .  The design is known as "RK 6.2".  It is a modular home, built from 6 modules that were created in the Hi-Tech Housing factory in Bristol, Indiana (USA) in January, 2012.  

The house was assembled on-site in February 2012, and put up for sale later in June.  We discovered it around December and moved in the following February, 2013.

I have included a cute video of the assembly process here, but beware : it is a 16 MB upload / stream !!!

Another thousand words.... from early November, 2013.  Luckily the garden grew well in the summer of 2013.

This home was built to be LEED certifiable. Originally, "platinum" certification was anticipated by the developer, but it is likely to be "gold" when the t's get crossed and the i's dotted.  There's many a slip "twixt the cup and the lip".  

In line with its small footprint / high efficiency / low consumption / low wastage heritage, we were attracted to the opportunity to "go greener" with PV solar panels and possibly a greener roof. 

While we are not ardent tree-huggers (actually we hug rhododendrons and azaleas) we are increasing aware of the real costs of living in a city, the phenomenal impact of bloat-housing, rampant over-building and all the wastage associated with it, both short and long term.

So, in the fall of 2013 we installed a 5.25 kW PV solar panel array that is tied to the local grid through a Micro-Feed-In-Tariff agreement with our local power company. Ontario has a luxurious MFit program running, and we jumped on the band wagon at 54c / kWH.  

Even with 21 rather large solar panels on the roof, there is still about 860 sq ft (80 sq m) of unencumbered space.  While the white roof (DURO-Last D50) might be very efficient, it would be a whole lot nicer to sip our evening coffee surround by verdant "something".  We need something bountiful and natural to balance or dilute the stark technology of the solar panels.

 (3 PM shot)

Some of the area is in the shadow of the 3rd storey walkout, some is on top of the walkout, some is on the roof of the extension to the kitchen and there is a "trough" above the garage. 

Some of the space is relatively extensive, while a lot of it is narrow, in the lane ways between the solar panels. The panels were arranged so that there would be a lane way at least 12" (0.3M) wide between the banks of panels, if only to provide me with space to stand while I sweep the snow off the relatively flat panels.

So at this stage, we are looking to slather the roofs with something lightweight like sedums, interspersed with grasses, caryx and some native flowers.  More details about the design in the next instalment.

A quick note about units.  In Toronto we are metric. But I grew up imperial. So now I flip-flop ambivalently. 10 3/4 square feet to a square metre, give or take a bit.

Inaugural Posting

20A Senlac Green Roof

This blog is set up to document the installation of a living / green roof on 20A Senlac Rd in Toronto.  

As we wend our way through the "dream and design" stage in the winter and spring of 2014, it is quite clear that there are very few "tall tales and true" from people doing small (75 m2, 750 sq ft) residential installations (other than many English garages). The vendor support seems to be scaled at 500 m2 to  5000 m2 sized areas, like the top of a condo tower or a whole factory, where growing media gets delivered by the truck load and the crane is in-place to lift it for you. Not to mention staff / labour, contractors, consultants, etc....

Not for us.  86 square metres of roof, maybe 8 yards of medium. No crane.  One unit of labour plus one more on the weekends. Equipment rented from Home Depot or Stevenson's.

Having said all that,  there are a few evangelists out there who are really generous and gracious with their time and experience, to encourage us forward.  We are increasingly thankful for their guidance and enthusiasm.

Starting Point.

To save a couple of thousand words, here are a couple of pictures to show our starting point. 

The first shows the existing DUROLAST D50 membrane on the top of the kitchen extension.

The second picture shows one corner of the main roof, with a clutterati of PV solar panels.  We have our challenges ahead of us.

I'll fill in the background over the next few entries.

Big picture.... it is my intention to provide a virtual diary of our endeavours as we proceed through the next few months and years, getting our living roof installed and then maintained for years to come.  The trials and the tribulations. I don't have any particular axe to grind other than providing a documentary of our endeavours.  Some things will go well, and we will likely stub our toes on more than one occasion.  I'll try to include all aspects of our journey.

Very much "in the fullness of time..."

The only other gotcha is that this project had a number of parallel streams of work related to different aspects of the larger undertaking. So the blog might seem to jump around a bit as Task B appears to be proceeding,  while waiting for materials for Task A.  The publishing dates are in the correct sequence work-wise, but might not be that actual date the work was undertaken, nor closely related to the date when the photo was taken.